


Little Thieves

by ohwise1ne



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: 1984/Hunger Game vibes, Alpha Ben Solo, Alpha Kylo Ren, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dirty Talk, Emotional Slow Burn, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Gratuitous Smut, Omega Rey, Possessive Kylo Ren, Rey robs houses for the Resistance, Smut, don't look for a lot of plot here people, this grew a plot when I wasn't paying attention
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-08-17 00:47:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 74,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16505975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohwise1ne/pseuds/ohwise1ne
Summary: "If you come out now, Omega, I'll make this easy for you."His voice carries clearly through the house, and it's almost as sinful as the smell of him, suffocating her as she shrinks back against the wall of his closet.“Or maybe… you don’t want this to be easy.” A pause. “Yes. Oh, yes. I can smell it on you. You can’t hide from me.”Rey breaks into the wrong house. Kylo Ren catches her in the act.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is literal filth. Smutty, gratuitous filth. I guess I needed a break from the lovebirds in my other story to get back to my roots. Enjoy.

Midnight passes in a shivery breeze through the neighborhood, plucking yellow leaves from the line of willows that stand sentinel along its edge.

Through her binoculars, the dark windows of 204 Fleetwood Court stare back at Rey like an open bank vault. Three nights have gone by without any glimpse of the black Audi in the cobblestone driveway – or its owner.

Her patience has finally paid off.

“I think we’re clear.” She slips the binoculars into the bag around her waist. “Still no sign of him. I’m going to move in.”

“I don’t have a good feeling about this.” Rose’s concern is clear even through her earpiece. “I’ve been doing some background on this guy. He’s a real hot shot. One of Snoke’s attack dogs.”

“All the more reason.”

If there’s anything better than relieving the filthy rich of their ill-begotten pearls and silver, it’s burglarizing the barbarians who run the First Order.

Rey steps briefly into the streetlight – then slips like a shadow, silent, along the hedges across the street. Pausing at their edge, she examines her route to the huge colonial. The wraparound porch is brightly illuminated by a light fixture above the grand double doors. But their drone images this week had revealed a massive backyard, promising seclusion.

“We’ve got eyes on the house from the corner,” Rose says. “So you can stop picking your nose and get in there.”

Rey glances at the lamppost she’s referring to – _neighborhood watch,_ reads the sign beneath the camera – and sticks her tongue out at it.

The backyard is blessedly dark, with tall pines to hide any suggestion of a neighboring house. Rey used to be disgusted by the very wealthy’s obsession with privacy and the money they will waste to acquire it. Recently, it’s become her favorite thing about them.

She peers through the sliding glass door and inspects the security device within. “Start the timer.”

Rose sighs heavily in her ear. “This again?”

“Poe and I have a bet. Ten seconds or less.”

“You’d better be taking this seriously, Rey. I still don’t understand why we couldn’t have targeted another vacation home. Not one of Snoke's guys."

Rey smiles sweetly. “But then we wouldn’t get the satisfaction of using their own filthy money to buy the blasters to cut them down.”

“You know what I mean, Rey. Don’t make me say it. You need to watch yourself.”

The implication is clear. She bristles. “I’m not going to get nervous about some rabid Alpha asshole. I can handle myself.”

As a child, Rey had no parents to rear her – so she was raised instead by the apathy of the downtown markets, where she snatched pears and meat pies from the stalls to stop the growling in her tiny stomach. Her education was the vendors’ suspicious glares that led to heavy smacks across the head whenever she happened to be seen.

She learned very quickly how _not_ to be seen.

And when she turned fifteen, pink glands sprouting on her wrists and throat, she learned even quicker how not to be seen by Alphas.

Rey owns only enough clothes to fit in a backpack, but she has the strongest medical-grade suppressants on the market, traded for watches and cell phones with the women down in the dock district. It is a point of pride for her. There are nights where she may sleep with an empty stomach, and the soles of her sneakers may be peeling. But she can slip past an Alpha storekeeper completely unseen and rob him blind.

“I know you can.” Rose’s smile carries in her voice. “Now go get ‘em, princess.”

The lock clicks. Silently, Rey slides the door open.

She is immediately assaulted by the strongest smell of Alpha she has ever scented in her life.

It’s been years – six years, precisely – since she was last struck dizzy by an Alpha. The last time, she had just recently presented and had not yet started her suppressants. The Alpha that corned her in the street that day had smelled repugnant, overwhelming. Rey nearly threw up on his leather shoes.

Thanks to the suppressants, however, Rey can now barely even register a whiff of their designation. She has to depend on their stellar personalities to give them away instead.

But this. This Alpha. His scent is… _mouthwatering._ Slowly, Rey pokes her head through the curtain into a dark hall and breathes in –  _fresh leather, pine needles and a hint of burning wood._ Her knees feel a little weak.

“That’s ten seconds.” Rose’s voice in her ear nearly makes her jump. “Are you done yet?”

The red light on the security system is still blinking rapidly beside the door. “ _Shit._ ”

Poe’s victorious whoops are audible in the background as Rey pushes past the curtain – and the fierce wave of confused desire that follows – to make short work of the device. Silently, she curses herself. It only took her eight seconds.

In other circumstances, she would be defending her honor and arguing for a another try. But Rey is too busy trying to remember what she is doing here.

 _Find something valuable. Hide your tracks. Get in and get out. Roll around on the Alpha’s sheets and cover yourself in his scent._ Rey shakes her head violently. What the fuck is wrong with her?

“You all good, Rey?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m great.”

The house is surprisingly spartan. The neighborhood may be one of the wealthiest in the region, but the decor is lacking the vulgar indulgence of the other homes Rey has robbed the past six months.

This quickly turns out to be a problem. There is no silver in the sleek mod hutch in the dining room. No hideous, jewel-studded art pieces on display on the shelves. The only thing of significance she finds is a crumpled receipt on the kitchen's granite countertop, charged to an account belonging to a _Kylo Ren._

Eight minutes have passed, with nothing to show for it.

With dread, Rey knows what her next stop will have to be.

She moves up the stairs in silence. The scent of him draws her down the hall, which overlooks the first floor landing, and all the way to the last door on the left.

So far, Rey has mostly been able to keep herself together in the face of this... unexpected inconvenience. Mostly. Her vibrant awareness of this man’s scent has faded to a dull roar, retreating back to her Omega hindbrain – where it belongs.

But when she gives the door a push with her hand, Rey is completely unprepared for the wall of _Alpha Alpha Alpha_ that slams into her.

If she thought the rest of the house was bad, the bedroom is positively _dripping_ with the scent of him. It rolls out the door and engulfs her, rousing her usually obedient glands into an itchy, hot _throb._ Heart racing, she steels her resolve and takes a step inside to survey the room, just to make sure the real Alpha is not actually here. _Not that that would be such a terrible thing._

No. That would be a horrifyingly, unspeakably _catastrophic_ thing. In the eyes of the First Order, Rey and the rest of the Resistance are domestic terrorists. No matter how amazing he may smell, the Alpha who lives here would likely haul her straight to Snoke’s execution chambers before he even finished scenting her.

The thought alone of this smoke-and-leather Alpha scenting her is enough to make her glands start twitching again.

“I need to get out of here,” Rey mumbles into her mouthpiece. “Quickly. This Alpha shit is messing with my brain.”

“I knew this was a bad idea.” Rose manages to sound at once both concerned and disapproving. “Forget the hit and get out of that house right now.”

Rey is suddenly furious with herself. “No. No – I can do this. Just – just two more minutes, and I’ll have something to show for this.”

Ignoring Rose’s protests, Rey gathers all her strength of will and moves into the room.

It’s dominated by a king size bed, all plush black pillows and sheets. With great effort, she forces herself to walk instead to the dresser. An Alpha who smells this good must surely have a girlfriend. She quashes her deep displeasure at this thought and begins rifling through the drawers, searching for a box that might be hiding jewelry.

Instead, she only finds black boxer-briefs and t-shirts. Rey is wondering if this man knows there are other colors in the world – when she realizes she has lifted a shirt from the drawer and is holding it against her face.

She drops the fabric like she’s been burned. The slam of the drawer rattles the mirror hanging on the wall.

“No jewelry,” she says weakly.

“Rey. Listen to me. You don’t sound like yourself. I really think you need to leave.”

“I’m fine.” Is she _whining?_   “Just – one more place to –“

And then she sees it. A watch, glinting on his nightstand. Flushed with relief, she rushes over and snatches it up. At least she will have _something_ to show for this nightmare.

“All right,” Rey breathes into her mouthpiece. “I’ve got something. I’m coming out now.”

Triumphant, she waits for Rose’s confirmation, idly fingering her prize.

But instead, Rose begins speaking in a panicked rush.

“Oh… Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit oh _shit._ Rey – there’s a car pulling in the driveway.”

“ _What –?!_ ”

“There’s a fucking _car._ You need to get out of that house _right now!”_

“What the – I’m in the fucking _bedroom,_ Rose! On the second floor! I –“ Her breath is coming fast, which is not helping the situation with this man’s stupidly incredible scent, overwhelming her hysteria and dulling her basic motor functions.

_Alpha will not be pleased._

“Then you need to hide. Right now. He’s – oh, god, Rey, he’s getting out of the car. Shit, he’s _huge.”_

Rey wildly looks around the bedroom for an escape. There are windows on either side of the bed, but when she throws back the curtains, they won’t budge. Madly, she imagines throwing herself over the bannister in the hall and landing in a running sprint for the exit.

She is nearly to the corridor when there is the unmistakable sound of the front door opening and slamming shut.

The downstairs light switches on.

“I’ve got to go,” Rey hisses, and clicks off the earpiece,

And then, because she has completely lost her mind, she moves just a little closer to get a better glimpse of him.

Rose wasn’t kidding. He’s large. _Very_ large. And wearing all black, just as Rey suspected. He has a phone to his ear, and he’s speaking into it somberly. For a moment, she can’t make out his face behind a shock of dark hair.

Then his head snaps up, and Rey’s heart stutters to a halt in her chest.

“I’ll call you back.”

He slips the phone into his pocket. For a few heart-stopping seconds, he stands in utter stillness. Inhaling. _Deeply._

_“Omega.”_

His deep voice carries clearly across the open space, and Rey feels goosebumps break out across her entire body. She is fixed there, spellbound, unable to move. Every cell in her body urges her to answer his call.

He glances up, and his eyes rove the second story landing.

Rey’s adrenaline kicks back in full force.

As silently as she can, she backs into bedroom. There are heavy footsteps in the hall, and she gets half a glimpse of his face. He’s sniffing, she realizes. He’s fucking _tracking_ her. How the hell can he smell her -?!

He turns toward the stairs.

Heart palpitating wildly, Rey throws open the only other door in the bedroom and nearly falls into a closet full of suits. Fingers trembling, she attempts to close the door to a crack without making a sound.

Which is a really terrible idea. Because this is a very, _very_ small space, and Rey can’t breathe without taking in huge gulps of _Alpha_. Her head is spinning with a potent mixture of terror and desire as she backs against the wall.

A creak travels up the stairs.

“I know you’re here, Omega. This house _reeks_ of you.”

Another creak, this time near the bedroom door. Rey shrinks further in the back of the closet, heartbeat thundering in her ears.

“If you come out now, I’ll make this easy.”

His voice is drawing closer as he approaches the bedroom. It’s _so deep,_ and almost as sinful as the scent of him, coming into even clearer focus as he pushes open the bedroom door.

“Or maybe… you don’t want this to be easy.” A pause. “Yes. Oh, yes. I can smell it on you, little girl. You can’t hide from me.”

Rey’s head falls back against the wall, chest heaving rapidly. She is probably about to die, and all she can think about is the sound of this Alpha’s magnificent voice, calling her a _little girl_ – and how badly she wants him to do it again. This is how it’s going to end for her. Surrounded by thousand-dollar suits, curled up in the bedroom closet of a First Order assassin, trembling with desire for an _Alpha._

“All right.” His voice is right outside the closet. “The hard way, then.”

The door swings open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first time writing omegaverse and I'm a little nervous, so your feedback is greatly appreciated! <3 Thank you for reading!  
> (Also come say hello on tumblr [@ohwise1ne](http://ohwise1ne.tumblr.com)!!)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge thank you to [LuxLush](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luxlush) for talking me off a cliff with this chapter and for the [stunning moodboard.](https://ohwise1ne.tumblr.com/post/179878929644/little-thieves-an-alphaomega-au-by-ohwise1ne)

His frame fills the entire doorway, a black eclipse blotting out the bedroom light.

"Get off the floor."

Silky sleeves brush past her face as Rey rises, compelled to obey. The movement brings her face but a few inches away from his broad chest. Rey is of average height, but she hardly reaches this giant man's collarbone.

A shuddery inhale, and his scent invades her lungs, filling them up completely. Until she's bursting with it.

A deep growl vibrates through this man's chest. He takes a step back.

"Into the light, Omega. Where I can see you."

She obeys, unthinking. Like a stranger in her own body, aflame with some ancient need to please him.

His face is – not what she expected. It is all sharp angles and pale skin, speckled with moles. His eyes are haunted. Dark. Not just because they are almost completely black as they study her, but because of the secrets they seem to hold – the cruelties they have witnessed, lurking in their depths.

This is someone who has seen men die. Rey recognizes the expression from her own reflection, staring hollowly back at her from car windows and glass storefronts.

"How old are you?"

The timbre of his voice sends a shock through her. "Twenty-one."

"Really." His lip curls. "You don't look a day older than seventeen."

Rey grits her teeth. "Should I come back with my birth certificate?"

"You're going to answer my questions. Then we'll decide what to do with you." A dangerous glint flashes across his eyes. "And you'll answer them honestly, Omega. I can tell when you're lying."

With long fingers, he unfastens the buttons of his wool coat one by one. His gaze never leaves her.

"Who sent you?"

 _He knows._ Rey's pounding heart leaps into her throat, nearly choking her. "No one."

"What did I tell you about lying?" The man shrugs off his coat, revealing a dark t-shirt and thick, bare arms. "Was it Hux? Phasma? How much did they pay you to come here? Pollute my home with the stench of an Omega without her suppressants?"

His scent is even stronger, without the coat. Rey's thoughts are spinning, frantically struggling to arrange themselves into some semblance of coherence. "I _am_ on suppressants."

The air in the room shifts, like the dark energy that crackles in the breeze before a storm _(alpha is displeased you have failed to please him)_ – and he begins to move toward her.

"Be careful, sweetheart. That's the third time you've lied tonight. I'm running out of patience."

"I'm not lying," she whines, a pathetic sound. "And I have no idea who those people are."

"Let's try this again." He is standing at her side now, very close, and her hair tickles her cheek as he brushes it gently from the side of her face. "Tell me your name."

"Rey," she whispers.

"Very good, Rey." The touch is almost a caress. "That wasn't so hard, was it?"

Desperately, Rey tries to pull herself together. This man might be the most stupidly attractive Alpha she has ever met. Every neuron of her being is intoxicated by his smell, drunk off the heady pleasure of it. But he will kill her, once he learns who she is. Maybe even if he doesn't.

Killing people is, quite literally, his specialty.

It's hard to remember this, however, when everything about him – from his hungry eyes to the pheromones rolling off him in thick waves – suggests he is interested in ruining her in an entirely different way.

"What about yours?" Rey demands suddenly. "Tell me your name too."

A flicker of surprise passes across his expression. "Kylo. Kylo Ren." A tilt of the head. "So they didn't send you after all."

Still frozen in place, she finds the courage to meet his eyes and bare her teeth at him. "I told you that already. No one sent me."

"Such spirit." Kylo Ren chuckles, a deep, throaty sound that sends tingles all the way down to her toes. Long fingers still sifting through her hair, he leans down so that his voice hovers directly beside her ear.

"Then tell me, little Rey," he murmurs. "How did you end up in my bedroom closet?"

The air around her is growing thick, heavy with the weight of his taste. "I broke in. Through the back door."

"That's not what I asked." Warm breath tickles the fine hairs along her nape, and then he blows a stream of air directly against the gland below her ear. An unwilling gasp is yanked from Rey's chest, head lolling backward without her permission as she offers more of her throat to him.

"I don't have another answer."

"Then perhaps I should take you to the agency for interrogation. Before I do something I regret. I shouldn't be alone with you here."

This was bad. Very bad. Even worse than being stuck in this suffocating bedroom, her skin vibrating with the frequency of his aura. The agency would torture her when they discovered who she was.

She could end up compromising the entire Resistance.

The words start tumbling out of her in a shameful rush, without any time to consider them. "I sleep on the streets in the fish markets," she says. "I don't have papers to work… no papers to do anything at all. I never knew my parents. I steal to pay for my suppressants and to keep clothes on my back. I came here because the house was empty and I was - hungry."

It is half a fabrication, spun from the murky details of her past. Rey hasn't slept on a sidewalk in two years, since Finn found her fighting a pack of dogs in an alley and brought her to Leia for help.

But the half-truths in her story must resonate with Kylo Ren, because he steps back to study her. There is finally space between their bodies; Rey lets out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding.

"How long have you been doing this?"

"My whole life."

"No. Breaking into houses."

"Six months."

He cocks his head. Rey flushes under his gaze and rubs her neck - a mistake, she realizes, when his pupils dilate rapidly and his nostrils flare.

"It's a good story, Omega." His voice is ridiculously deep. "I might actually believe it, if you weren't lying about the suppressants."

"I _am_ on suppressants."

"You don't smell like it."

"While we're pretending to be experts on everyone else's designations, maybe you shouldn't take enhancers if you can't control yourself alone in a room with an Omega for five minutes."

She regrets the words before she has even finished speaking.

 _"Enhancers -?_ Who the fuck do you think you're talking to?"

In an instant, he has backed her flat up against the wall, crowding her. The look on his face is wild. Hungry. Rey knows exactly who she is talking to.

"You're wrong, little Omega." Fingers roughly grasp her chin and yank her gaze upward. "I am exercising an extraordinary amount of control. Let's play a little game to help you understand that." Looming above her, Kylo Ren's body radiates authority and leather and sex. "You materialize in my bedroom, your glands pulsing and your cunt full of slick. You smell _obscene._ Do you have any idea of the things your body is asking me to do to you?"

A whimper threatens to rise in her throat, and Rey needs to bite her lip to keep it down.

"You broke into my home, Rey." His voice is low and dangerous. "I should have you arrested. But I think I'd rather tie you up myself. Keep you locked here for days while I lick every last drop I can squeeze out of you - while we learn all the ways to make you scream on my cock. This is what your body is asking me for. You _stink_ with how badly you want me to fuck you right now."

His grip softens, fingers unfolding along her jaw. He leans forward so his words are murmured in the space around her ear. "So yes. I am controlling myself. Though you may want to stop testing my fucking patience."

It's difficult to think. His breath is hot against her neck again, spilling across the gland there and making her squirm. Her mind struggles uselessly to conjure up all the reasons why this is a terrible, horrible, very bad idea – and comes up blank. In fact, it only wants to provide her with unhelpful, half-mad justifications. _It would distract him. It would stop him from asking more questions. It would feel so,_ so _good._

Because nothing has ever felt as good as this Alpha's mouth, hovering over her throat and promising all the terrible things he could do to her. And Rey is sure nothing will ever feel as good as him making good on those promises.

"Let's play my game now, Alpha."

The words seem to come to her from far away. From somewhere primitive and deep and wholly Omega. She meets his eyes through her lashes, and watches him blink.

"I knew the moment I came in here what would happen. I've never reacted this way, before, to an Alpha. I could have left. And instead… I came up to your room. I touched all your things. And I waited for you to find me."

His grip tightens in her hair. "Rey –"

Gathering her courage, she leans forward and licks a hot stripe across his scent gland.

Kylo swears, his entire body jolting. In an instant, his large hand has slipped down to engulf her throat, pinning her against the wall. The pressure on her trachea is just enough to make her breathing ragged – or perhaps that's from the fire in his eyes as he leans closer to her face. Rey whimpers.

"If you touch all my things, I get to touch all yours."

And then he kisses her.

It's as though some aching, forgotten piece of her has come alive at the feel of his lips on her own. Everything else is secondary to this ancient connection, millennia old, that is stirring deep within her. He is an Alpha. He is strong, he is capable, he desires her.

She will let him touch whatever he wants.

Rey tries to lean forward to deepen the kiss, but his warm palm is still pressed against her throat, and she whines in frustration. This still seems to achieve the desired effect, however, because suddenly his tongue is plunging past her lips and licking inside her mouth. Her head explodes with the taste of him, and Rey can't think, she can't breathe – she can only stand there as he continues giving her long, slow, searing kisses – at once overwhelming and impossibly inadequate to meet the depth of her sudden need.

When he releases her, Rey draws in air with deep gasp, oxygen flooding back to her brain in a dizzy rush. It's hard to see his face in the dark, but there's no mistaking the wild look in his eyes, the decision on the tip of his tongue.

Rey decides to make it for him.

She has more control of the kiss this time, now that his hands are on her hips instead of her throat. She takes the opportunity to sink her teeth into his plush bottom lip. The sound he makes in response – a snarling growl that is pressed against her mouth – makes her go a little weak in the knees. Sensing this, Kylo's large hands slide around to palm her ass, lifting her several inches up the wall; instinctively, Rey's legs hook around his waist.

He breaks away to hiss in her ear. "Do you do this at all the houses you rob? Wait around for someone to fuck you?"

One of his hands slides roughly up her shirt, along her heaving ribcage, under her bra. "No," she says, but her voice is broken and unfamiliar.

"Don't lie to me, Omega." His fingers find her straining nipple and twist – a sharp shock of pleasure-pain that makes her cry out. "Little thief, sneaking around, touching things that don't belong to her. You wanted this to happen."

 _"Yes_ – I mean, no, I've never - at another house, or with another Alpha –"

She drops off with a cry at the sensation of his mouth on her neck, teeth scraping along her scent gland. Rey pants heavily, pinned between his body and the wall.

"Just with me, then?" he murmurs against her throat. "Why should I believe you?"

"I'm on _suppressants._ But I – when I walked into this house – I knew right away. I knew. All I could smell… all I could fucking _think about_ was –"

She yelps as he suddenly lifts her away from the wall and carries her bodily across the room. He deposits her on his bedspread, and _oh,_ the smell of his sheets is just as exquisite as she imagined.

Kylo Ren looms over her for a moment in the dark, and then all the breath leaves her lungs as he grasps her ankles and yanks her easily toward him in one rough movement. Like she weighs nothing. _Strong Alpha,_ preens that dark voice at the back of Rey's mind, unfurling with satisfaction. _He is strong. He will fight for you._

"The little thief never learned her manners." His tone is laced with danger and something much darker. "Lying, stealing, swearing… Luckily, I've been told I am an exceptional teacher."

"I'm not lying."

"We'll see."

His large fingers are suddenly dragging up her inner thigh, pulling the fabric of her leggings against the sensitive skin. Rey's breath gets trapped in her chest when they stop just short of the crotch of her leggings, lingering there.

"You're making a mess of these." His fingertips rub back and forth at the juncture of her thigh and her groin, dragging the fabric through the slick that has pooled there. Rey can't breathe. "Wouldn't want the poor little street girl to ruin her only work uniform."

He shucks them down her legs in one motion, pulling them to her knees. Her mouth is so, so dry. He dips his hand between her thighs again, and Rey can't hold back the soft whimper that escapes when he gently rests his flat palm against her aching core.

And then... leaves it there. Completely still. Hardly even pressed against her. Rey feels like she might combust. She tries to press back against him, tilting upward, but suddenly there is a bruising grip at her hip, pinning her there.

"Be still for me, Omega." His voice, calling her that, does something to her brain. Her entire body freezes except for her chest, which heaves with her strained breathing. "You have one last chance to be honest with me." Kylo still isn't moving his hand – a barely-there, maddening pressure against her center, and Rey's is beginning to pant with the effort of remaining still.

 _Be good for your Alpha,_ that small voice implores her. _Listen to him._

"What did you come here for?"

"For something – something valuable – something I could sell," she gasps out. "For food."

"Did you intend to seduce me?"

"What -?! No, I –"

_"Who sent you?"_

"Please, I already told you – _no one."_

His palm disappears, only to be replaced by two fingers, sliding gently along either side of her vulva. He deliberately does not touch her where she needs him, but the movement teases the flesh around her throbbing clit. She keens.

"One last chance, Rey." His hand stills again. "Who. Sent you. To my home?"

Eyes squeezed shut, she thrashes her head back and forth against the blanket in adamant denial. "No one, _please_ , Alpha, please – it was just me, I swear – I just – I need you to –"

Kylo growls, and then he is on her in an instant, his lips at her gland and his hand in her hair as he finally, _finally_ starts to move his fucking hand. The first brush of his finger over her clit makes her sob with relief, and she can barely register his voice in her ear as he begins a rhythmic motion, back and forth over the hood: "We'll deal with this later then."

He slides down her body, and before Rey can process what is happening, his teeth are nipping at her inner thigh. With his finger continuing its steady movements across her clit, it takes all Rey's willpower to push herself up on her elbows to watch him.

She immediately is glad that she did.

Kylo is crouched between her knees, staring at her like he wants to devour her whole. His scent – it's shifted, somehow, with the promise of his intentions. It's soothes her. _Alpha will take care of you,_ it whispers, coursing through her bloodstream like a drug. _Alpha is here._

"You smell so _fucking good."_ His voice is hoarse, and Rey realizes with a jolt that he is inhaling deeply between her legs, his pupils completely dilated as he stares at her twitching cunt. At any other time, she would probably find this strange behavior. Right now, with his finger still moving slowly back and forth, she is deeply turned on.

The touch of his tongue against her center is like an electric current, careening up her spine at lightning speed, and Rey arches off the bed with a soft cry. Kylo growls and – to her great distress – moves the hand that had been pleasuring her to her abdomen. His hand is so large, it nearly spans the entire width of her as it presses her firmly down. The movement pulls her skin tight across her pelvis, shifting the hood of her clitoris and exposing her to the chilly air.

He pauses like that, eyes ravenous as he takes her in. Fresh slick dribbles from between her lips under his gaze, and Kylo makes his own desperate sound, watching it.

"This is for me," he says, with something like reverence in his voice. With a single fingertip, he collects her wetness at the base of her entrance and ignores her breathless whimpers as he brings it to his lips. "I did this to you, Omega."

"Yes," she hears herself babble in agreement, "yes, yes, it's yours."

She tries her best to keep watching him as he lowers his head. But when the flat of his tongue swipes straight up her slit – and then does it again, and again, in broad, deliberate movements – she loses her strength and sinks back against the mattress.

This slow torture goes on for what seems like many minutes, and by the end of it, Rey is near-delirious with need, panting and writhing. His hand has stayed firm on her abdomen, preventing her from moving her hips, but her flushed face thrashes from side to side against the bed. At some point, she has started begging.

But it's her trembling fingers, reaching down and sliding through his surprisingly soft hair, that seem to finally spur him onward. Kylo groans deeply, and then wraps his lips around the hood of her clit.

The pleasure is beyond words. His tongue finds a steady rhythm, just like how Rey likes to touch herself when she's in the shower – when she has the luxury of privacy, that is. She shares that bathroom with eight other women at the Resistance base, so she does not often have time to indulge, usually opting for grinding frantically against her fingers until she can relieve the ache as quickly as possible.

But Kylo's tongue toys with her clit at a slow, leisurely pace, as though they have all the time in the world. As though his own need isn't palpable in the air around her, urgent and hungry. He builds the rhythm slowly, and with each flick of his tongue, the hot coil of pleasure in her core winds tighter and tighter, like a spring about to burst.

When a fingertip swirls the pink flesh at her entrance, Rey can no longer stop herself from crying out. Face hot, she stuffs the knuckles of her hand between her teeth, trying to muffle the sound – and then Kylo abruptly stops to yank it away.

"I want to hear you." His voice is nearly unrecognizable with need. Lips parted and trembling, Rey gives him a helpless nod.

Satisfied, Kylo returns his mouth to her dripping cunt.

He does not delay at her entrance this time, instead sliding a large finger straight inside of her. There is no time to adjust before he is adding a second, and then he's moving them in and out, fucking her with his hand while his tongue continues that maddening rhythm against her clit.

At some point, he crooks his fingers while they're seated deep inside her, rocking against her front wall. It is akin to an explosion of blinding stars behind her eyes. Rey sobs with pleasure, writhing against his hand, unable to contain herself.

"Please, Alpha, oh please –" she's chanting, her voice shaking. "– more, I need more, Alpha, give me _more_ –"

Cruelly, he does exactly the opposite. His long fingers slide out of her, trailing slick as they pull away, and his mouth vanishes. Rey is sure the noise that leaves her is the most shattered sound she's ever made, and then he is kissing her fiercely, swallowing her sobs, as his hands work furiously at her leggings.

"Hush, Omega –" the words are pressed against her lips, a cooling balm to her panic. "I'll give you exactly what you need."

His big hands grasp the backs of her thighs and push them toward her shoulders, so her feet are dangling in the air. He pulls away long enough to yank her shoes off, eyes never leaving her, and then she is naked from the waist down as he finally manages to strip her of her stupid leggings.

With just as much efficiency, he undoes the button of his jeans, slides down the zipper, and shoves down his pants just far enough to allow his cock to spring loose.

Rey inhales sharply, her eyes widening.

He's _gigantic._

She barely has time to process this information - or to even memorize what he looks like, which she finds herself suddenly overcome with the need to do – before he is crawling up her body again.

"No more robbing houses after this, little Omega." He pushes damp hair out of her flushed face, giving her a look she can't place. She blinks.

"What?"

"No more. Robbing. Houses." He slings her ankles over his shoulders so that his fingers can dip between her thighs again, making her dizzy. "No other Alpha will find you this way. This is all for me."

Rey's breath trembles in her lungs, a brief flash of reality slipping through the back door. She does not plan to ever see this man again after tonight, if she manages to escape with her life. None of this matters.

"Fine."

This clearly isn't good enough for Kylo. There is suddenly the press of his cock against her entrance, teasing her, and her eyes nearly roll back in her head.

"Say it, Rey." His eyes roam her face hungrily, captivated. "Tell me you won't."

"I –" She breaks off when he uses his hand to guide the head of his cock up to her clit, dragging slick around it, and Rey loses all remainder of rational thought. _"Please,_ Alpha, I – I won't do it anymore – I won't ever do it again – whatever you want –"

Kylo enters her in one long thrust, and her breath floods out of her in a rush. He is large – so large – and the pressure is almost too much for her to bear as he seats himself completely inside of her, the silhouette of his shoulders rising and falling rapidly above her.

"Good girl." His voice is ragged along the edges, but that strange look of reverence flickers across his features again as he touches her face. "My good girl."

Rey has never been with an Alpha before. There's been a handful of Betas, fumbling in dark alleys or in the storage room at base. But nothing that could have prepared her for the feeling of this man – Kylo Ren – filling her so completely and then filling her even more, an exquisite burn that quells a deep emptiness she had not even known existed.

She can feel the tension rolling off him as he holds himself perfectly still above her with remarkable restraint.

"Alpha," she breathes. Her body is a stretched wire, pulled taut and trembling as electricity sparks through her. _"Please."_

That's all it takes.

He begins fucking her slowly at first, so that she can feel every inch of him as he slides along her inner walls. He leans down on his elbows so he can kiss her, tongue stroking the inside of her mouth as he begins to pick up the pace.

When he moves to deepen the angle, she clenches around him involuntarily, gasping. Kylo swears against her lips. "You're being so good for me, Rey," he tells her, mouth pressed hotly to her ear. "So perfect. Your cunt is so wet for me. Like it was made for this."

He is everywhere, Rey realizes. Not just inside her, where they're fucking, but like a physical presence in her veins, his scent pervading every cell of her body. The taste of his pleasure rolls off of him, and Rey buries her hot face in his neck to breathe it in, laving her tongue against his scent gland. Kylo groans, a guttural sound, and Rey feels it across her entire body.

He is keeping the pace slow and deep, but Rey's pleasure has begun to build again. She feels it like a rising wave, a deep ocean of sensation that zooms into focus where his hips snap against hers, making wet, obscene sounds against the slick running down her thighs.

"Kylo," she gasps brokenly against his ear. "Kylo, I need you to touch me."

"Such a greedy little thief." He dips his hand between her thighs, and then long, wet fingers are pushing past her teeth, pressing against her tongue. Her taste is sharp and sweet, making her flush. "You'll take whatever I give you."

He begins fucking her in earnest then, a punishing rhythm that begins to drive her slowly up the bed. She gasps and moans brokenly around his fingers, still stuffed in her mouth, and he stares down at her in the darkness like he wants to worship her.

When his fingers push too far back, she gags – a sound that makes his nostrils flare with pleasure. A moment later, Kylo has pulled his hand from her lips and replaced it with his hungry mouth. His kiss is brutal. Ravaging. He swallows her stream of moans and whimpers like he is starving for them.

They don't stop when Kylo pulls away to breathe, leaning his forehead heavily against hers as he continues driving into her. Her voice is completely foreign to her ears, strained with desperation. "Please, Alpha, please, I can't – I need to –"

A hand slips between their bodies, and Rey nearly starts crying with relief. "I knew you could ask nicely," he murmurs, breathless, and he begins rolling her clit beneath his fingers.

Rey's head rolls backward as he works her, the combined sensations of his cock and his fingertips transforming her into a mess of moans and scrabbling fingers and breathless pleas.

As her climax rushes toward her, Rey's eyes squeeze shut, mouth falling open in soundless pleasure – and then yelps at a vicious smack across her bottom, hot pain blooming in its wake.

Her eyes fly open to glare at him, but it falters when she sees Kylo's face, inches from her own. "You will look at me, Rey," he says, his voice low. "You will look at your Alpha while he makes you come."

His fingers begin flicking over her clit at a faster pace, and Rey can barely breathe. "Yes, Alpha," she manages. "Oh, oh _god –"_

The pleasure is still building, a continuous flood of sensation that stretches from her curling toes to the arch in her back to the tips of her fingers, which grasp desperately at his arms to anchor her. She can sense the tipping point at the very edge of her senses, and she _whines_ as she chases its peak, so close to where she is now. Her face is wide open and vulnerable as she gasps up at Kylo, her eyes brimming with tears, with the need and agony of her orgasm which hovers just out of reach –

"Remember this, Omega," he tells her, piercing her with his black eyes. "Look at my face and remember this moment. You'll never come again without thinking of it."

This strange, possessive instruction is somehow what pushes her over the edge. Her climax crashes over her like a tidal wave, every muscle in her body tensing and spasming as ecstasy surges through her, mixed with the musky scent of her Alpha, radiating satisfaction. Her eyes never leave his face, and he hungrily soaks in every moment, bathing in her soaring pleasure.

"Oh, Alpha," she whimpers, when it finally begins to crest. "It was _so good."_

And something within him seems to snap.

With an animalistic growl, Kylo rises suddenly onto his knees, yanking her hips up onto his lap. Bruising fingers dig into her sides and hold her in place as he begins driving into her, eyes devouring her face and his lips parted with pleasure. This angle is deeper than the others, and even though she just finished her own orgasm, his cock begins striking something within her that makes her see stars.

She can feel the beginnings of his knot swelling at the base of him, and the thought stirs a mixture of terror and hungry anticipation. Breathing raggedly, she lets her hands wrap around his forearms, which bulge with tension as he holds her hips up.

"Tell me you're mine, Omega," he says hoarsely. "Say it."

And even though Rey will never see him again, she does.

When his knot begins swelling inside her, he lifts her completely off the bed and into his lap. A few more erratic thrusts, and he is moaning brokenly into her collarbone, his cock pulsing as he fills her up with hot spend. Her nose nudges at his dark hair, damp with sweat, and he yanks off her shirt so he can plant open-mouthed kisses on her skin, everywhere he can reach.

Many minutes later, they are curled up in a similar position on the bed, still locked together. Her eyes have fluttered shut, but he is still touching her face, she knows, with that same expression of bewildered amazement.

"Where the hell did you come from?" he says softly, against her temple.

She does not answer.

Sleep is a biological response for an Alpha after a coupling, so she is not surprised when he drifts off a few minutes later. That had, after all, been the key component of this insane escape plan. But she does find she is strangely disappointed, as she carefully detangles their limbs and slips out of bed, that he is not awake to make her stay.

* * *

The creep of bleak sunlight, spilling through his open curtains, pulls Ben Solo unwillingly from sleep.

As a rule, Ben does not indulge in over-sleeping. But this morning, he entertains the temptation to remain in bed just a little longer. He had been having such a lovely dream. A pleasant change from the nightmares that usually terrorize his evenings. There had been a girl in his bedroom. A beautiful girl, who smelled like summer grass and salted caramel. She had offered herself to him like a gift, and he had gladly accepted it. She had… _desired_ him. Such a foreign sensation, Ben thinks darkly, only known in the haze of a delirious dreamworld.

He rolls over, yawning deeply – and then his eyes fly open.

 _That scent._ It overpowers him for a moment, and he finds himself briefly lightheaded with desire. Had the smell of her somehow chased him back into the waking world? Was such a thing even possible?

Sitting up abruptly, Ben realizes several things at once. His watch is missing from the nightstand. He is still wearing his clothes from his return trip. His dick is hanging out of his pants. And a small bruise is blooming near his elbow, on his forearm.

Where her tiny, perfect hands had dug into his skin while he fucked her to orgasm.

The room suddenly feels much smaller, and Ben can't help himself – he breathes in deeply, letting the scent of his midnight intruder wash through him and ignite his memory.

_She had been real._

Ben swings his legs out of bed, looking around the room. Remembering in vivid detail what had taken place here. She had left afterward. He almost expects anger at the realization, but he finds himself uncharacteristically calm. Of course she had left. She is a house burglar.

He walks over to the window and watches the orange leaves stir on the branches outside. He will find her. He's already found her once. Ben smiles. If it's a chase that she wants, he will give her one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends I am completely overwhelmed by the response to this story!! This was basically an opportunity for me to pop my Reylo cherry and write some smut between these two before I get there in my longer fics. Actually, this was my first time writing a F/M scene in general. So I hope it was coherent and not too strange. 
> 
> I will deeply appreciate any comments or feedback you're willing to share <3
> 
> (also let's be friends on [tumblr](http://ohwise1ne.tumblr.com)!!)


	3. Chapter 3

The troopers file down the street in a winding line of white uniforms and flashing arms. On either side, the crowd surges against the barriers, roaring and waving their fists, a fanatic sea of support.

In the darkness of the alley, Poe shakes his head in disgust. "Like cattle." His voice is low over the roar of the crowd, for her ears only. "Brainwashed, the lot of them."

"They don't know any better." Rey hadn't either, once. She remembers the press of asphalt against her tiny toes, barely tall enough to see over the rail as she ogled at the faceless masks and cried out for them to let her join their ranks.

"They'll all be free soon enough."

"Where are you going?"

Poe flashes her a grin over his shoulder from the mouth of the alley. "There's an opening in front. We'll have a better view of the fireworks."

"The General told us to stay hidden."

"The General's not here." His grin has taken on a mischievous quality that never bodes well for Rey. "And we will stay hidden. After your brush with the Grim Reaper last week, you'd think you'd be ready for a little more fun."

He steps out into the blinding autumn sunlight. Rey has little choice but to follow him.

It has been a week since her botched robbery attempt at 204 Fleetwood Court, and the bruises from her near-fatal encounter with its owner are still fresh on her skin. Despite his feigned indifference now, Poe had been red-faced and shouting with the General when Rey had finally returned to base that evening. He'd wanted to go after her. Leia, for whatever reason, had not.

The camp's relief had been overwhelming for Rey, who has never had anyone to care about her absence before. After enduring the embraces of her friends, she explained she'd hidden in the man's closet until he had fallen asleep before managing to escape.

It was not _completely_ untruthful. She may have left out a few... insignificant details, in between. But the curious glint in Leia's eyes had suggested she was the only one who may not have been completely convinced by this story.

The morning is bright and sharp with cold, despite the press of bodies all around. Poe leads her through the throng of people, a mass of elbows and unwashed flesh, until they emerge near the front along the barrier erected for the march.

"A _perfect_ view for the fireworks," Poe says in her ear, gleeful. They have a clear shot of the huge outdoor stage from here, less than two hundred yards away, before which the stream of troopers are filing into neat lines. Huge black flags with the First Order's insignia are unfurled as a backdrop, three stories high.

He could be behind any of these white helmets, Rey knows. Watching her. Waiting to reveal her as a criminal.

But she won't allow herself to get distracted. Her temporary lapse in judgment last week is not going to jeopardize the success of today's mission. And besides, even if he is hiding behind one of those white uniforms, there is no way he will recognize her in her civilian clothes. She doubts he even got a good look at her face that night. After all, the bedroom had been very dark. She remembers it well - its memory has been on the edge of her thoughts ever since.

Poe's voice, tense with anticipation, pulls her abruptly back to the present as he leans close to her ear. "Here we go."

A sudden hush falls over the crowd. The last of the troopers have fallen into their orderly white lines before the stage. Every eye is drawn to the podium at its center.

Inexplicably, Rey's fingers are tugged to the stolen wristwatch in her pocket, an unexpected balm for her sudden nerves.

There is a ripple along the length of the backdrop, and then General Hux emerges, striding swiftly to the podium to the exuberant cheers of the crowd. Bile rises in Rey's throat. She has loathed this man since she watched him order the death of an eleven-year-old boy at the market for asking a trooper to take off his mask.

But the crowd's enthusiasm swells to a true thundering roar, ringing in her ears, when the Knights file out afterward.

And then Rey sees him, and she can hardly hear anything at all.

He isn't hiding behind a white mask, as it turns out. No - Kylo Ren is dressed completely in black, the uniform of Snoke's most effective killers. Of the most feared beings on this continent.

He is - majestic. A full head and shoulders above the rest of the Knights, and somehow even larger than Rey remembers. He stands with his hands folded behind him, shoulders thrown back, a physical incarnation of brute strength packed into six feet of muscle and skin. Of Alpha.

Rey can't look away.

His face is even more striking in the daylight. She recognizes his expression - the uncomfortably intense focus in his eyes - from the way he had studied her face as his fingers coaxed pleasure from between her thighs. Cataloguing her every reaction.

She feels her body begin to react to this memory before she can tamp it down. Her gland _pulses_ with the knowledge that her Alpha is there - _right there_ \- a few hundred yards away, with the same fingers and mouth and cock that had unraveled her to the brink of madness just a few nights before. Without thinking, she slides a hand along the side of her throat to calm the irritation.

Across the sea of humans, Kylo Ren's nostrils flare with sudden ferocity. His calm composure shatters as his eyes widen with recognition.

To Rey's horror, his dark gaze sweeps over the crowd, searching frantically - and then catches on her face.

Her heart is pounding so hard and so loud, she is certain that everyone around her must be able to hear. But Poe is completely focused on the red-headed general of the enemy army, who recites his welcoming remarks into a microphone. It's always the same at these annual Marches: some self-congratulatory jerking off about the First Order's latest initiative, the introduction of new Knights, the stern but friendly reminder that acts of treason will lead to swift and certain death.

Rey doesn't process any of it. Kylo Ren has not looked away from her, not even for a moment. Even from this far away, she can feel the inferno in his eyes like the heat of flame on her skin. He traps her with his gaze, shackles her with wordless communication - _you are mine,_ like the words have been spoken aloud in her mind, just for her. _I will have you._ His huge body is visibly tense with restraint, as though it requires every ounce of his considerable self-control not to throw himself from the stage and retrieve her right there and then.

Poe is leaning down to say something that Rey does not hear. For the first time, Kylo's eyes flicker away from her, fixing firmly on her friend's face. In that moment, Rey realizes very quickly that Kylo Ren had never intended to kill her after all. She is certain he's never looked at her the way he's currently staring at Poe, his face transformed with deliberate, deadly rage.

Voices swell around her in a chant about the long life of the Supreme Leader. He never comes to these things, of course - no one's ever seen him in public - but the rare assembly of troopers and Knights in a single location still make the event a perfect target. Rey abruptly remembers their purpose here.

"It's time." Poe's hand falls on her shoulder. Kylo's eyes follow the movement, and when they slide back up to her face, she is certain he really _is_ about to barrel through the line of soldiers and come to her, ceremony be damned.

But before he can take a single step - before Rey can even reach down for her blaster, its metal a cool comfort strapped to her calf - the explosions begin.

The sound is deafening. There is blinding light - a thunderous crack - and then chaos. Rey has just a moment to confirm that the bomb has hit its target - broken bodies in white uniforms are strewn through the street, the stage bright with red flames. Behind the podium, the long black flags are burning; a hole has been blown through one of the huge First Order insignias. The air is filled with sulfur and screams.

And then Kylo Ren is rising through the smoke like death - his Knights behind him - roaring some command as he hoists a blaster on his shoulder.

"That's our cue." People are screaming and shoving as they flee the carnage, but Poe looks perfectly calm as he pulls out his blaster. Excited, even. "I'll see you back at base. Don't get lost in any closets again."

And then Rey is alone in the crowd.

Her eyes flit briefly back to the stage. Kylo Ren and his Knights are no where in sight, and relief washes over her. At least, she thinks it's relief. She is definitely not disappointed that her Alpha is not charging at her, full-throttle, ready to disrupt her second mission this week.

In the chaos, it is not difficult to slip through the current of panic toward her destination. Rey learned early on that the best way to stay invisible is in the midst of a commotion. Fear can be as effective as a blindfold. So no one notices her as she slips past troopers and injured civilians, following the route that she's memorized from the hand-drawn map back at base, its blue line labeled _Scavenger._

The truck is at the edge of the park, right where she expected. It has been knocked on its side from the explosive planted beneath its cab. Smoke rises from its hood, and through the drivers window, Rey can see the white uniform of the dead trooper inside.

Her eyes catch the door hanging open at the back of the truck, and for a moment, the hungry market thief inside her is tempted to poke around within. There will be cases of food and refreshments intended for the marchers, she knows. Food that could feed the entire base for at least a month. And there's no one around to stop her from taking it.

She forces her attention back to the overturned cab. They each have a part to play today, and Rey's is located in the pocket of that dead trooper.

Hopping up on the side of smoking vehicle, Rey positions herself above the drivers side door. A few hard strikes with the heel of her blaster, and the window shatters in a shower of tinkling glass. She crouches down and reaches inside, fumbling for the lock, and then kicks open the door.

The trooper is heavier than he looks. Rey swears colorfully as she attempts to drag his body through the open door. By the time she gets him halfway out, his body slumped over the side, she is breathing heavily and cursing Poe for leaving her.

The air shifts suddenly, and Rey freezes atop the truck.

His scent hits her before she sees him. Thick with power and rage, it beckons to her, reaching for his Omega with invisible fingers that stroke along her scent gland and make her flush with her desire to please him.

 _Fuck._ He is not here yet, but he is no more than a block away. He will turn the corner any second now, Rey knows, and then her mission will be lost. And possibly her life.

Scrambling, Rey abandons her attempt to pull the trooper from the truck and instead begins digging in every pocket of his uniform she can reach. She prays that her prize isn't stowed away somewhere in the cabin instead, and is contemplating throwing herself inside so she can look - and hide - when her fingers press against the smooth shape of a key fob at the trooper's hip.

Triumph surges over her, heady and fierce. Rey tucks the key beside the wristwatch in her pocket and pushes herself off the truck's dangling wheel.

And then Kylo Ren appears at the end of the road.

Even from this distance, he looks wild. Animalistic. He glances frantically around the street, and Rey's survival instincts finally kick into gear - she leaps around the front of the cab and presses herself flat against the undercarriage of the overturned trailer.

 _"Omega!"_ The word is a desperate roar, and Rey is surprised by how much terror it holds. She has to clench her fists until her nails bite into her palms to prevent her body from answering his call. Her blaster is tucked against her calf again, but it would only take a single movement for her to brandish it and pull the trigger. He would be a large target. Hard to miss.

Instead, she remains frozen, desperately cataloguing her escape routes. She's fast, but she isn't capable of outrunning him - his legs are too long. There's a chain-link fence down the alley straight ahead. If she can scale it quickly, it might slow him down enough for her to escape his line of sight. Perhaps the smell from the burning truck will mask her scent, and he will simply go away.

He doesn't go away.

The air shifts again - his panicked scent slams into her with the force of the truck she's currently crouching behind - and then Kylo Ren is standing over her, breathing heavily.

His blaster clatters to the ground as his large hands engulf her arms, hauling her to her feet. His gaze runs frantically over her body, her face. A trail of blood is trickling down his temple.

"Are you hurt?"

This is - not what she expected him to say. His voice is hoarse. Something forbidden flutters in Rey's chest.

"No," she says, because his eyes demand that she answer.

"It's not safe for you here." His grip tightens on her arms, fingers digging into her skin. "The terrorists are armed. There's a firefight in the square. It's not safe."

Rey's heart climbs into her mouth. What the hell is she doing here, cowering behind a truck, while her friends are taking fire? She struggles against him, wriggling - "Let me _go -"_ but he pushes her, _hard,_ against the belly of the truck, metal and pipe digging into her lower back.

"You lied to me, little thief." His face contorts, and there's the anger she expected. "I looked for you. In the fish markets. There was no trace of you."

"I'm very good at hiding."

"Bullshit."

"Have me arrested, then. Execute me. It's in your power. You're a fucking _Knight."_ Rey spits the word out like poison.

Shock flits across his face, followed by breathtaking rage. Kylo leans close, just a few inches away from her face. "Very good, Rey. I _am_ a Knight. It's a thankless job, protecting the ungrateful scum of the streets. But it means I can do whatever I please."

He bends forward so that his nose nudges at her ear, and he takes a deep, shuddering breath in. Inhaling her scent. The realization makes her head spin.

"And you please me, little Rey," he murmurs, his voice low. "You please me very much."

A hot shiver scatters down her spine, and despite the uncomfortable press of the undercarriage at her shoulders, the stink of death and smoke all around her, Rey feels her body respond to the urgency in his voice. _Your Alpha desires you. Give him what he wants._

Instead, Rey tries to keep her voice as steady as possible. She does not succeed. "You don't know anything about me."

Kylo Ren growls, and one of his hands is in her hair, threading roughly along her scalp. "My house _stinks_ of you, Omega. My clothes. My bed. I can't get rid of your scent. I've tried. I've tried everything - I've tried sleeping at a fucking motel, but I - I can't get away from you. I’m going fucking insane with just the memory of it.”

Rey knows he must be aware of how her body is reacting to this confession, delivered in a rush of hot breath against her ear. Her scent gland, shivering under his mouth, is aflame and itchy with need. Her thighs are already damp with evidence of her desire, preparing for the push of her Alpha's knot. So she's not sure why she's shaking her head, as if she can deny the pheromones that are making him groan against her throat.

"I want nothing to do with you," she says, but the words are a lie even to her own ears.

His teeth graze her pulse, dancing wildly beneath the shallow skin of her throat. "You should have thought about that before you showed up in my closet." His hand fists harder in her hair, and her mouth falls open as he bares her throat to him. "This time, I won't let you leave."

Wheels scream around the corner, and the ground shudders with a tremendous _crash_ as a car plows into a nearby tree. Shouts follow the runaway vehicle, and then streaks of blaster fire as a group of troopers descend on the street.

Kylo Ren releases her in an instant, his own blaster back on his shoulder. In the space of those few seconds, he has transformed back into a warrior, radiating dominance and power, and Rey spares a moment to watch in awe as he begins to light up the smoking car with blaster fire.

"Behind me, Omega!"

His eyes are wild as he looks over his shoulder to shout the command. But Rey is already making a hard turn into the alley, scaling the chain-link fence, her sneakers pounding the pavement as she flees.

She doesn't slow down until she's at the river and approaching the base, hunched over and panting in front of the warehouse that's become her home. Blindly, she grasps at her pocket to confirm her treasures are still inside – and smiles.

That makes two things she's stolen from under Kylo Ren this week.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was only supposed to be a filthy one-shot, but it seems these two have a story to tell that just won't go away. So I've added a few chapters to the final count.
> 
> Thank you guys SO MUCH for all the kind notes you left me last chapter!! I am humbled and overwhelmed by your responses. It seriously means so much to know that you're enjoying this. This story is very different from the others I've been writing, so your feedback gives me such life <3


	4. Chapter 4

They leave at sundown.

The first two hours of the drive Rey spends crammed between crates filled with packing peanuts, shivering in the claustrophobic darkness of the truck’s rear. The tin walls vibrate with the roar of the road – it is too loud to speak back here, the drive too jolting to sleep. So she simply waits, gripping the edge of the crate beneath her, knees occasionally knocking against Rose’s. Her body is tense with the anticipation of Poe’s voice in her ear, directing them to hide.

But the checkpoints are soft tonight. By the time an hour has passed, they are beginning to thin out, and after two hours, Poe’s voice crackles in her earpiece to say they’ve gone sixty miles without a glimpse of a trooper.

The truck lurches to a halt, throwing her briefly sideways, and then the rear door swings open. Night air floods into the trailer, sweet and fresh.

“Five minutes,” Poe tells them, the words misting in the cold as they hop off the gate.

Thick trees crowd along the edges of the road, more trees than Rey’s ever seen in one place in her life. But it’s the view above her head that really takes her breath away.

It’s as if they’ve landed on another planet. Rey has grown up under a starless sky in the Capital, so she is always awe-struck by the vastness of the universe, laid bare above for all to see. Chin tilted upward, she lets herself drink in the sight of an evening that is positively dripping with stars. From the shackles of the city, it’s hard to remember how much _else_ there is out there, just above her head, obscured by the smog and the reflection of the streetlights.

Just another thing stolen by the First Order and its boundless greed.

They squeeze into the front seat of the truck for the rest of the drive. It’s a tight fit, but the leg space is a luxury compared to the previous two hours of her journey. Though Poe stays off the main highway to avoid the unlikely risk of another checkpoint, Rey’s veins are still humming with low-dose adrenaline – ready to fold herself below the dashboard if a pair of headlights appears on the road ahead.

“Relax.” Rose’s small hand covers hers. “Nothing but yuppies here for miles around.”

It’s true, of course. Anyone with family wealth will not be condemned to the stinking streets of the Capital, which produces most of the goods for the region, but rather sequester themselves in the leafy hills surrounding the city, dotted with mansions and streets like Fleetwood Fucking Court.

And there it is – the _true_ reason for her nerves tonight. They may be headed far away from Kylo Ren’s nauseatingly swanky neighborhood, but Rey can’t shake the feeling that he will materialize for a third time. He’s nearly destroyed her most recent two missions, after all. She’s been lucky twice so far, but she doesn’t want to take her chances with a third confrontation – especially when her body betrays her so completely whenever he’s near.

And even when he’s not, she still finds her mind replaying their previous two encounters in excruciating detail. In the darkness of her bunk, she has relived a thousand times the evening that he found her in his bedroom. The evening that he ruined her completely for other men.

Rey focuses hard on the road in front of them, trees whipping past the truck in a blur of branches. They are not going to be caught – not by any of the Supreme Leader's troopers, and certainly not by Kylo Ren.

With something this important, they can’t afford to be.

* * *

The wristwatch in her pocket has just ticked past midnight when they finally arrive.

They park the truck in the trees, off the main road. Brittle leaves crunch beneath her sneakers as she straps her weapons to her back, tugging a black mask over her face. The woods are whispering with the noises of the small animals that live here, the hum of late autumn frogs. The sounds are like music to Rey, who has never set foot this far outside the city.

Still sitting inside the truck, Rose’s face is awash with eerie green light from the screen in her lap as she sets up her station. “One trooper in the security tower out front, and three inside the building. Looks like they’re getting drunk in a back room.”

“This will be easier than we thought.” Poe’s smirk is visible in the starlight, shining through the trees. “Hand me a blaster, Rey.”

“Let’s stick to the stunners where we can tonight, hot shot.” Rose is giving him a stern look over the screen. She’s clearly referring to the unscripted showdown Poe initiated with a group of troopers at the march.

“Yes, mom.” He accepts the blaster from Rey with an eye roll before his face vanishes behind his own fabric mask. “But if the bad men start shooting, I can’t make any promises.”

The compound is surrounded by twelve feet of razor wire, but Rey’s got a laser in her pouch. A few clean slices through the metal and they’re crawling through the hole to the other side. They follow the perimeter of the fence for a few minutes in silence, and Rey uses the opportunity to get an eyeful of the sprawling structure they’re about to infiltrate.

It’ll be the largest break-in she’s attempted so far, and her toes are tingling with excitement at the challenge.

The security tower looms out of the darkness like a broken tooth. Rey finds the key fob she nicked from the supply driver at the march and presses it into Poe’s open palm. His fingers close tightly around her hand for a moment, squeezing. She can’t see his eyes through the mask, but they share a meaningful look in the darkness before he releases her.

With a pass of the key, the door clicks open.

The trooper doesn’t even see them coming. A propaganda program is blaring its poison loudly on a holopad, so he likely doesn’t hear anything either as Poe triggers the stunner and his body seizes up, stiff as a board – then goes limp.

“All right, Tico.” Poe presses a finger to his earpiece as Rey settles at the now-vacated control panel. “Bring her on up.”

Stroking a few buttons on the panel, Rey watches with satisfaction through the thick glass window as the gate groans outside, swinging open to the dark road.

Behind her, Poe is busy struggling to stuff the trooper’s unconscious body into a storage closet. With a grunt and a final push, he manages to close the door and lock it. “What the hell are they feeding these guys?”

“Rations are in shortage, Poe." Her voice drips with derision. "Don't let them hear you speak such treason.”

“Not for much longer. We’re going to feed the entire district when we’re done we’re done with these fuckers.”

“Easy, cowboy.” Rey smiles behind her mask. “We’ve got to get through those drunks in the breakroom first.”

Her nerves are starting to settle down, now that their plan is finally in motion. They’ve gotten through the hardest part. The troopers playing cards will be a piece of cake, and then they just need to load up the truck and leave. By the time the morning shift arrives at the compound, Rey and her friends will be safely back in the Capital, unloading their crates and celebrating.

“Time to move.”

Outside, Rose is rolling the truck through the gate, headlights switched off. Poe returns Rey's key. The cocky grin is clear in his voice, even behind the black fabric that covers his face. “I’ll take care of our friends in the back room. You start scoping out the goods.”

Before they leave, Rey double-checks the lock on the closet door – and shoves a chair under the knob for good measure.

Neither of them notice the tiny red button flashing hidden on the underside of the control panel, or its label in small print below:

_Distress._

* * *

The supply compound is enormous. It’s several times the size of the Resistance base, with enough food and weapons to supply an army. Each door leads to another cavernous warehouse, lined with soaring shelves that contain every style of good imaginable.

When Rey stumbles upon a room overflowing with crates of rations, she finds it very difficult to pull herself away. Anger tightens her jaw at the thought of all the children starving in the lower districts when there are warehouses full of sustenance right outside the city.

They will not be hungry for much longer. But first, their captors must be punished.

The proton bombs are in the rear of the compound, racks of them in each crate. The locks on the containers are complex, their contents too delicate to risk forcing them, but with a pass of the key fob the crates pop open with a hiss. Inside, the rows of egg-shaped encasings are cold to the touch. Rey shivers at the revenge they will enact with the deadly powder packed within.

Poe, predictably, does not dally with the troopers. He even brings a few bottles of their brew when he meets Rey at the truck. But before he can pop one open, Rose materializes beside him to snatch them away.

“For the ride back," she says, winking, before he can protest.

From there, it’s just a matter of packing up the supplies. There's a loading entrance in the back of the compound, and Rose parks just inside the warehouse for easy access. One by one, they wheel the crates through the aisles of towering shelves, until the back of the truck is filled to the ceiling and Rey is grinning triumphantly behind her mask.

Poe pats the side of the truck, a hollow sound that rings through the room. “We’ve got room for one more.”

“I’ll grab it,” Rey says, feeling flush with confidence. “Get us ready for the ride back. I think there’s a bottle opener under the seat somewhere.”

She is halfway across the warehouse when the sirens start.

The scream of it makes her jump, her whole body suddenly coursing with adrenaline. Bright red light fills the room, washing everything in the color of blood. A resounding _bang_  splits the air, and Rey whirls around in horror to see that the loading entrance has slammed shut, shutting them inside with their truck.

_They're trapped._

From far away, the unmistakable noise of shouting travels across the echoing compound. Shouldering his blaster, Poe looks between the three of them and makes a quick decision.

“Rose and I will go ahead and hold them while you get that door open,” he tells Rey. “Ten seconds. I’m betting on you this time, Scavenger.”

She swallows. Opening doors. That's something she can do in her sleep. She nods once in assent, and then watches anxiously as her friends – the harsh blare of the alarm masking their footsteps – rush through the cavernous doorway and disappear around the corner. Leaving her alone.

The device beside the garage door is flashing red like the sirens that scream overhead. Her fingers are unexpectedly steady as they dig through her pouch, and then she’s unscrewing the casing, revealing the tangle of wires and circuitry within. This, she can do. This is her _thing._ With laser-like focus, she takes out her tools and gets to work.

“There’s a lot of them, Rey.” Rose’s voice is hushed and tinny in her earpiece. “Twelve. Fifteen.”

“Don’t go far.” Carefully, she lifts a piece of circuitry from the device, wires trailing after it. “This won’t take me long.”

The sound of blaster fire from across the compound bounces across the high ceiling, and Rey swears under her breath. Almost of their own accord, her fingers are mapping the connections, tracing their paths along the circuits. _There._ She plucks a loose wire, fastens a connector over its head, and plugs it into her holopad. A stream of warnings immediately begins to fill the screen.

“Shit. _Shit._ They see us,” Poe says in her ear. There’s a sudden flurry of blaster fire, both in her earpiece and echoing against the walls. _“Shit_ – to your left, Rose – your left!”

More blaster fire. Rey can barely breathe. Her fingers, glowing red in the flash of the alarm, are starting to shake. “Get back here – I’m almost done,” she hisses into her mic. Frantically, she enters the series of prompts that will override the system.

“We’re coming for you, Rey,” Poe says. “You’d better be ready for us.”

There is a click, a confirmation on her screen, and then the large warehouse door is slowly rising open.

The relief is staggering. “It’s done,” she says, zipping up her pouch, “it’s done, it’s done – now get the fuck back here and let’s _go.”_

Her earpiece crackles. Rose’s voice stutters in and out, but Rey can’t understand what she’s saying. Across the compound, there is the roar of more blaster fire.

“Shit. Shit. Can you hear me?” Rey presses the earpiece, and there’s more crackling. More broken words. 

 _Fuck this._ She slings her blaster off her back and starts to run in a sprint down the aisle.

"Can either of you hear me? _Hello -?!"_

Her earpiece crackles again.

“Hello, Rey.”

It’s not Rose. Or Poe. At this point, Rey would recognize that voice anywhere, even over the blare of a hundred sirens, in the static of a broken earpiece.

She stops dead in her tracks, the breath completely leaving her lungs.

“I can hear you quite well.” His voice is so intimate in her ear. Rey shivers. “Though your friends won’t be able to. You might want to target a better comm system, next time you try stealing from the First Order.”

Rey takes several steps backward. Her muscles are trembling with several warring impulses: to freeze in terror, to flee as fast as her legs can carry her... And another, one that is stirred by the sound of his low words in her ear and the dark memories they elicit. With great determination, she grabs hold of  _that_ impulse and buries it deep, deep within her. Before it can completely take control.

“Not that it matters.” He’s still talking, and Rey can’t think while he’s doing that. “They’re going to be dead soon anyway. Them and the rest of your precious _Resistance.”_

At that moment, two troopers appear at the mouth of the warehouse, and Rey springs into action. She leaps behind a shelf, narrowly avoiding a shot of bright red light that whizzes past her face, and then she’s shooting them through the crates, their bodies jerking in the air as her fire catches their torsos.

More shapes appear at the end of the hall, and Rey braces herself to shoot again – and instead is flooded with sweet, sweet relief when she recognizes her friends, hurtling through the doorway. Poe’s mask is missing, and he seems to have injured his leg; his arm is slung over Rose’s shoulder.

Rey is on them in an instant, helping Rose drag their friend back to the truck. Rose’s voice is shaking with fury. “Where the _fuck_ did you go?”

“I have no idea – the communication dropped off –“

Bright lines of fire streak past them, and Rey yanks them both bodily behind the truck. “Get him inside,” she tells Rose in a tone that brokers no argument. “Get the truck running. I’ll hold them.”

She sprints across the room, drawing fire from the mouth of the warehouse, and then she’s pressed behind a crate, gasping for air. She gives herself just a moment to catch her breath before she steals her nerves, leans over the side of the crate and begins to fire. She catches one, two, three of them – white uniforms crumpling in the doorway –

“You shouldn’t have run, little Rey.” Kylo Ren's voice is back in her ear, and it makes her falter long enough for a blast to catch the edge of the crate. “Did you think I wouldn’t find you?”

Another flurry of fire, and the crate in front of her explodes, knocking her backward. Rey scrambles to her feet, but her shoulder is flaming with pain, and now she’s out in the open – the troopers are raising their weapons -

_”Over here, assholes!”_

Poe has somehow leapt out from behind the truck, his face contorted with rage, and then he’s lighting them up with his blaster. Rey crawls to another aisle to catch her breath, her shoulder throbbing, and god _damnit,_ there’s more coming through the door –

“It’s no matter,” he murmurs in the earpiece. “I’ve found you now.”

A mad idea cuts through her panic like a knife. Aiming her gun toward the ceiling, Rey fires off some well-placed shots at the towering stack of crates near the entrance. In slow motion, the entire shelf begins its topple downward. The troopers look up at the last moment – then –

_(blinding light, heat and smoke surging over her, ringing ringing ringing –)_

The shooting stops.

For a long moment, the only sound is the blare of the alarm, echoing across the cavernous ceiling as the smoke clears.

Rey gathers her courage and looks out at the aftermath.

The entrance is filled with burning crates and broken bodies. No more troopers. No more blaster fire. Rey can hardly believe it. She pushes herself to her feet, still crouched behind her shelf.

And then Kylo Ren emerges in the doorway.

He seems completely untouched by the fighting. All in black, he is a stark contrast to the white uniforms that litter the cement floor around him. His face is still with utter calm, stepping over the bodies of his subordinates without an ounce of concern. _Alpha,_ the insane part of her mind begins whispering at once. _He’s here, he’s here, he’s here._

And then his eyes fall upon Poe.

 _”You.”_ The word is hissed from behind clenched teeth, but it seems louder than anything in the room. Kylo suddenly looks – enraged. Terrifying. Poe, who is typically brimming with bluster, takes a step back.

“Give me the girl,” Kylo snarls, “and I’ll make your death swift.”

Poe looks genuinely confused – because he doesn’t know, of course he doesn’t know. How could he? His eyes narrow, and he shoots off a blast of fire –

– and Kylo Ren actually _flicks it away from him_ , the laser bouncing off the armor of his forearm as he cuts it through the air, and _how is that even possible?_ Eyes flaming with new rage, Kylo raises his weapon and points it squarely at Poe. "We'll make it painful, then.”

But before he can shoot, blue light streaks past Kylo’s head, stirring his hair. With a noise of pure rage, he whirls around – and freezes.

Rey is standing in the middle of the room, her grip surprisingly steady as she aims her blaster at him. She has tugged off her mask; her cheeks are rosy from its heat, her gaze bright and livid.

Their eyes meet, and she can smell him now, furious and powerful and full of _need._ Kylo’s head cocks to the side, and then a terrible smile curls his lips.

“Still don’t know where you belong, I see.” He licks his lips. _”Come here, Omega.”_

It’s an ancient command, spoken with the weight of a thousands years of power and blood. Rey feels her legs begin to move without her permission. The smirk twisting Kylo’s lips widens as he watches her – and then falters.

Rey stops directly before her friends and faces him, shoulders squared. She does not lower her blaster.

“You’ll have to kill me if you want to touch them.”

Kylo’s expression darkens with fury. His eyes flit erratically between her face and Poe, standing behind her. His nostrils flare. “Is _this_ the Alpha that you go to when you leave? The reason you keep running?”

“What the fuck is he talking about?” Poe sounds almost offended. “Rey, do you _know_ this asshole?”

Rey opens her mouth to deny it, all of it, but she can’t find her voice. There is only Kylo Ren, his scent engulfing her with betrayal and broken rage. _Alpha is displeased. You must soothe your Alpha._ Distantly, shouts travel across the compound, cutting through the blare of the alarms. Reinforcements have arrived.

“There is no other Alpha," Rey says, and she is falling, tumbling headfirst into the darkness behind his gaze. "Just you.”

Her finger pulls the trigger.

She waits only long enough to see his eyes widen, his body twisting to avoid the shot – fire singes his side as it scrapes past him – and then she is running.

Past the truck, into the grass – running, running, running. Her eyes stream in the cold air, darkness swallowing her as she sprints through the trees. He is close behind, she knows. But that is what she wanted.

She can only hope her friends have the good sense to get in the truck and get the fuck out of here.

The alarms fade into the distance, replaced by the whirl of leaves as her feet fly across the ground. Branches catch on her clothes, reaching for her, and Rey plows forward, gasping.

“When will you stop running, little thief?”

His voice is low in her earpiece, and not nearly as breathless as she feels. This observation brings her a renewed surge of panic.

“You have already delivered yourself to me."

The barbed wire fence rises in front of her. She takes a hard turn, trying to throw him off her trail. She won’t be able to keep up this pace for much longer.

“You can’t – keep – taking – what’s – _mine.”_

A streak of fire flies overhead, and a branch crashes down directly in her path. Rey stops herself just short of barreling into it, but she trips over her own feet anyway, spilling sideways to the ground.

Shoulder aching in protest, Rey drags herself behind a tree, clutching her blaster to her chest and gasping for breath.

“Not so talkative now.” That deep voice is no longer in her earpiece, but ringing clearly through the trees behind her. Moving closer. “That’s all right. You’ll tell me everything soon enough.”

Rey leans out from behind her shelter and fires wildly. He bats away the blue streaks with his infuriating armor, not even slowing his pace.

“We have a lot to talk about, it would seem.”

When she goes to shoot again, he is standing right in front of her. His hand closes around the weapon and seizes it from her grip, throwing it violently over his shoulder.

He pulls her up into a punishing kiss. All the tension drains from Rey’s traitorous body at his touch, and she hears herself fucking _moan_ against his lips, fingers bunching in his jacket as he yanks her to her feet.

“And you _will_ tell me the truth this time, little Omega.” He rips her earpiece away and replaces it with his mouth. His hands slide up her sides, and she is trembling, trembling under his eyes, his lips. Her terror crashes up against the desire that rushes through her at his proximity – _Alpha. Alpha. Yes._

“Because if there’s anything I hate more than a liar,” he hisses against her ear, “it’s a fucking _traitor_ _.”_

There is the press of metal against her lower back –  _her stunner,_ she realizes, _he took her stunner –_

And then her world is engulfed in darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god this story wasn't supposed to have a plot and here I am. Someone please take my keyboard away. 
> 
> This chapter had another first for me – heavy action scenes. I hope everything was clear and not bogged down with too much detail. I promise we're getting back to the good stuff in the next chapter ;)
> 
> Finally, I want to thank you all once again for your amazing response to this story. I have no words for how humbled I am by your comments. This has been a lot of new and challenging writing for me, and it seriously means the world to hear what's working for you and what isn't. You guys are the best.
> 
> p.s. You all need to check out the beautiful moodboards I've been gifted from [@kylotrashforever](https://kylotrashforever.tumblr.com) ([here](https://ohwise1ne.tumblr.com/post/180069762399/little-thieves-an-alphaomega-au-by-ohwise1ne)) and [@quixoticlux](http://quixoticlux.tumblr.com) ([here](https://ohwise1ne.tumblr.com/post/179968833344/little-thieves-an-alphaomega-au-by-ohwise1ne)) for this story. I can't stop staring at them.


	5. Chapter 5

When consciousness returns, it is in a trickle of fleeting, half-formed sensations, like pebbles skipping across a sleeping pond.

Warmth. The bite of metal at the insides of her wrists. Burning wood and hot oats, their scents swirling and reaching for her. Lips, the barest ghost of them, brushing across her brow.

It is impossible to distinguish dream from reality. Disjointed, the images bleed into one another just beyond her reach, somewhere above her head – the murky shapes of a world seen from underwater.

Movement. Sharp pain in her lower back. And then a memory, rippling through her and stirring the muddy sediment of her thoughts:

_(pine needles and terror, the mouth of a weapon kisses her spine like a lover – and he’s there above her, liquid black eyes chasing her deep, deeper, a helpless descent into)_

With a great gasp, Rey breaks through the surface.

It is morning.

Sunlight filters through a window, glowing warmth on her skin. She is restrained to a chair, her arms twisted behind its wooden back and locked at the wrists with a pair of binders. The room is almost entirely bare – not a single decoration on the walls. The tired-looking floorboards are naked of a rug. At the corner of her vision, a wool blanket is draped over the foot of a mattress.

Kylo Ren sits on a stool directly in front of her. Staring.

“Where am I?” Rey is surprised to find her voice unfamiliar. Rough with disuse.

His dark head tilts, the slightest movement, toward his shoulder. His expression is completely unreadable. “You’re my guest.”

Rey struggles for a moment against her restraints, jerking her arms uselessly behind her. The chair wobbles slightly on the floor. She fixes him with a steely glare. “Very hospitable of you.”

His scent is rolling over her like a thundercloud, thick with electricity and violent emotion. It is a dark contrast to the carefully neutral expression he wears as he leans forward, elbows on his knees.

“We could go directly to the Supreme Leader himself, if you’d prefer.”

Fear spikes her pulse. “No.”

“Then you’ll take whatever hospitality I give you.” His face darkens. “Though I’m not feeling particularly generous today.”

The stool scrapes across the floor as he rises. Rey sits perfectly still, heart pounding, as he begins to circle her, taking long, slow steps that each make a heavy _thud_ on the wooden floorboards.

“You should have listened to me the first time.” His voice is low. Predatory. “You only needed to ask, and I would have given you anything you wanted, Omega. Anything at all.”

“I don’t want anything from you.”

A deep chuckle. Rey wishes she could see his face. “I know exactly what you want. I could smell it through the stinking crowd of commoners at that march, and I can smell it on you now. It’s all over you.”

From somewhere behind her, his large hand cards through her hair, fingernails dragging along the back of her head. She exhales unsteadily, trying and failing to keep her breathing even.

“I’m offering you a second chance, Rey. Give me what I want, and things will be so much easier for you.”

She bares her teeth, defiant, even as her heart thunders in her ears. “I’ve already made my decision.”

“Tread carefully, Omega. Things are different now.” She still can't see him, but something dark is creeping into his voice. "Stealing from my home, I could forgive. Such a pretty thing you were, trembling and wet for me before I even touched you. My lovely little thief. Finding you waiting for me was of much greater value than anything you could have taken from that house.”

His fingers tighten suddenly, and her scalp stretches with the sweet burn of it. “But stealing from the First Order… Well.” A soft, humorless chuckle. “That changes things.”

Kylo yanks her head back, _hard,_ and Rey gasps at the sharp pain, even as her lungs fill with his scent and _shudder_ with it.

“They’ll kill you, you know. Once they find out what you’ve done.” The fist in her hair tugs harder, and a small noise is torn from her mouth. “The Supreme Leader has little patience for Resistance scum.”

“I don’t care,” Rey hisses through the bright-white pain in her scalp. “I’m not going to tell you anything.”

The ceiling swims in her vision, moisture pricking at her eyes. She can’t see him as he bends down to nuzzle at her ear, a tender contradiction to the way he’s holding her fast.

“It’s time to let go, Rey.” His voice is softer now – almost crooning. “Tell me what you know, and they will spare you. You could be a hero. I could make life so _good_ for you.”

The air around her is growing heavy with the delicious weight of his scent. Even as her eyes stream from the throbbing in her scalp, she is briefly stricken with the taste of a desire that is not her own. It seems to travel through her, a passenger to the oxygen in her veins before it settles, hot and liquid, deep within her core.

“Kill me, then.” She grits her teeth at the ceiling, pouring as much loathing into her voice as she can. “I’m not interested in a life that has anything to do with you.”

With a low, angry sound, Kylo releases his grip on her hair. Tingling relief washes across her skull and down her spine.

There is the sound of his heavy footsteps, walking away from her. And then the slam of a door.

* * *

Time is a strange thing when you’re tied to a chair. It loses its solidity with nothing to occupy it, stretching out until Rey isn’t sure how long she’s been sitting there, shoulders aching and back cramping. She has tried to shuffle a bit toward the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of wherever the hell he’s taken her, but all she can see is the thin shapes of bare trees cutting across a gray sky.

The door opens while Rey is still craning her head toward the outside world.

“They won’t find you here.” His deep voice, somewhere to her side, is casual now. Less murderous. “Anyone who knows about this place is long dead.”

Rey glares fixedly at the wall. “You clearly don’t know much about my friends.”

“I know where they are.” Rey’s heart skips a horrified beat. “We’ve tracked their stolen truck to the marshlands. My Knights are hunting them down as we speak. It’s only a matter of time before they are captured. Whether they survive or not is completely up to you.”

His scent is catching up to her now, and isn’t it strange to be breathless with lust for a man while simultaneously imagining wringing his throat. Then the sweet smell of oats floats over to her, and Rey briefly forgets thoughts of both lust and throat-wringing. _Food. Your Alpha has brought you food._ It’s followed by Kylo Ren himself, holding a steaming bowl as he drags the stool across the floor to sit directly in front of her.

To her displeasure, Rey’s stomach gives a telling rumble.

“I’ve put myself at tremendous risk, bringing you here.” He stirs the contents of the bowl lazily, not looking up. “The Supreme Leader is not a patient man. He will demand I bring you to him.”

Rey can’t tear her eyes away from the bowl in his hands. She’s not sure how long she was unconscious for, but it feels like an entire week since the last time she’s eaten. “Then why bring me here at all?”

Kylo lifts a dripping spoonful of oats from the bowl, steam rising from it. His dark eyes flick up to meet hers. “I’d rather like to deal with my Omega myself.”

She glares at him, ignoring the way her mouth waters. _I’m not your fucking Omega,_ she doesn’t say. Does he intend to torture her by eating in front of her? Well, joke’s on him. Rey has gone much longer than twenty-four hours with an empty stomach. She is no stranger to hunger, and she certainly won’t be swayed by his –

Suddenly, the spoon is hovering in front of her face, the smell of oats filling her nostrils. “Eat.”

Confusion cracks briefly through her anger. Rey blinks.

“Eat, Omega.” Kylo lets the tip of the spoon nudge her lips. “I can see that you’re hungry.”

Rey leans back in the chair as far as she can, scowling. “Is this some sort of trick?”

“No trick.” The spoon chases her backward, until the oats are right under nose again. “Would that be any way to treat a guest?”

She opens her mouth to remind him that he’s tied her to a fucking _chair,_ but then the spoon is pushing into her mouth, swallowing any remaining protests. The taste of oats and honey hits her tongue like a sweet burst of heaven. Rey can count on one hand the number of times she’s ever had honey, widely considered a delicacy and light years away from the muddy taste of her dry powdered rations. A small, helpless noise of pleasure escapes her as he pulls the spoon away.

“Good girl,” he murmurs darkly, and Rey isn’t sure if she wants to fuck him or strangle him.

They continue this way in silence, Kylo feeding her spoonfuls of honeyed oats and Rey begrudgingly allowing him. His eyes don’t leave her face throughout, watching her lips each time they close around the spoon. Like he wants to feed her something else entirely.

Rey is definitely leaning toward fucking him by the time the spoon is scraping the empty bowl, many minutes later. Kylo makes a pleased sound, places the plate on the floor beside him – and then pulls out her leather pouch.

The sight is like a punch to the gut. That pouch is one of her only possessions, and by far her dearest. Rey has spent _years_ gathering her tools of the trade – lockpicks, screwdrivers, laser cutters, pliers. Every item has its own specific purpose. She owes her life to that little bag of tricks.

The thought of him taking it away from her makes her stomach turn.

If he notices her distress, Kylo doesn’t give any indication of it. He begins leafing through its contents with disinterest, looking unimpressed. “Sophisticated tools for a street thief.”

“That’s because I’m not a street thief.” The words come out in a hiss through her clenched teeth. “I’m a rebel soldier.”

Kylo huffs out a derisive laugh. “There are no soldiers in the Resistance. Everything you have is stolen. Your little rebel comrades are all playing pretend, running around with secondhand gear pilfered from the First Order.” He looks up at her, and the room seems to shrink around them. “The only difference between a street thief and a rebel is that one belongs in the execution chamber.”

Her heartbeat is very loud in her ears. When she speaks, her voice sounds much braver than she feels. “I already told you to kill me.”

“Dead rebels can’t answer questions.” He looks up from the bag to let his gaze roam over her body without shame; despite herself, Rey shivers. “Besides, I think we’ll find some use for you yet.”

He draws a long pick from the bag, one with a serrated edge. Her precious tools look so fragile in his fingers.

“But first, you’re going to tell me what you know. No more games, Omega.”

“I thought you liked games.” She means it to be a jab, but the memory of their first encounter is now skipping across her thoughts. She squirms uselessly against her restraints. With her arms twisted behind her back like this, she feels uncomfortably exposed, the front of her body completely open to him.

“Keep being good for me,” Kylo murmurs, leaning forward, “and maybe we can play another.”

Rey despises this man and everything he stands for. She does. But _fuck_ if the sound of his voice, dripping with dark promise, doesn’t make her insides squirm with needy anticipation.

To her dismay, Kylo seems to notice. His lips curl with pleasure as he observes her reaction, and Rey’s insides flutter. “That’s my girl.”

“I’m not your _girl,”_ she hisses.

“Hmm… Maybe not.” Long, elegant fingers brush her jaw, skirting across her scent gland. The touch sends an unexpected shock of pleasure through her body, and Rey lets out a pained whine. “But _this_ … This belongs to _me.”_

She can only glare back at him, chest rising and falling with rapid breaths. A flush is creeping up her neck, but Rey isn’t thinking about that. She isn’t. If she does, her angry facade might come crashing down altogether – and right now that’s the only thing stopping her from openly begging him to continue touching her.

She is equal parts relieved and distraught to learn she doesn’t have to. “We’re going to start from the beginning.” Kylo strokes her cheek with the backs of his knuckles, and Rey tries her best to look disgusted, to lean away. She’s pretty sure she does neither. “Your name, little soldier. The real one.”

“It’s Rey,” she snarls. “Just Rey.”

“There is not a single _Rey_ anywhere in the Capital archives.”

“I don’t have any papers – I wasn’t lying about that.” _He looked for her in the archives?_ “My parents… I never knew them. They died in the war.”

A dark look passes across Kylo’s face. “As did mine.”

This new information catches Rey off guard. She had not expected Kylo Ren, who seems to have emerged from a completely separate universe of privilege and power, to understand anything about the tragedy of her own childhood.

The question bursts out of her before she can stop it. “Then how could you betray their memory and – and stand behind _Snoke?”_

His face has closed off again, losing any trace of the vulnerability she had glimpsed there. “You won’t remember the horrors of the Great War, Rey. But I do.” His fingers have resumed their distracting caress across her face. “Millions dead. Open warfare in the streets. Starvation. The First Order was the anewer to all of it.”

His eyes have a far-off look about them now, as though he is not completely there with her.

“My parents didn’t see that," he says, almost to himself. "But I did.”

“Well, it seems you were mistaken.” Rey can no longer contain herself, and her voice is hot with righteous anger. “People are still starving. Still dying. The First Order’s _answer_  only benefits the few while everyone else suffers.”

“Their suffering would be infinitely greater without the First Order to keep the rabble in check.”

“And what about the rest of them? Do their lives not matter too?”

“Your life is the only one I care about.” His voice is surprisingly soft. “And your life could be so different. So good. Let me make things good for you, Rey. Don’t make the same mistake they did.”

She bares her teeth, scowling. His useless excuses – his apathy - make her stomach turn with revulsion. “The only mistake I’ve ever made was meeting _you.”_

In half of an instant, he is upon her, nearly lifting her off the floor with his grip on her shoulders. The chair balances precariously backward on two legs as he looms over her, eyes unrecognizable in their rage. “A mistake? This is all a _mistake_ to you now –?”

“Have you lost your mind?” she snarls, matching his fury. “You tied me to a chair! You took me fucking _prisoner_ –”

_“You are my guest!”_

“– and you’re _Kylo Ren._ You're a Knight. Of course this was a mistake."

The weightless sensation in her stomach increases threefold as he leans her even farther backward, crowding her. “You can't lie to me, Omega. You begged me to touch you that night. You were _dripping_ for me. I watched you fall apart on my mouth – on my knot. I remember every fucking detail. It’s – it’s haunted me.” His face twists, and suddenly, he looks like a man who is starving. “I’ve looked for you. Every damn day, I’ve looked for you. I can think of nothing else but how you looked when I – when you –”

Rey’s glands flutter sympathetically in response. She clenches her teeth, fighting desperately against the heat pooling inside her belly. She remembers too. Very clearly.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says instead – and then tries not to flail as Kylo begins pushing her chair backward with a terrible _scrape_ against the wood, until the backs of her arms collide with the fabric of the mattress and they can’t go any further.

“This isn’t something I _do_ , Rey,” he hisses. His scent pours over her, possessive and needy, and Rey struggles to keep herself together under its assault. “I don’t fuck Omegas. I never thought I needed to. And then you appear in my house and offer yourself to me, like a fucking  _gift_ , and I let you give it all to me. _You were mine._ You wanted – so many things, and I – I took _care_ of you, Omega. I did.” He searches her face wildly, faltering. “Didn’t I?”

There is something so wretched, so beseeching in these final words that Rey’s heart gives an agonized lurch.

“You did.” The truth is wrenched out of her before she can stop it. “You took… _such_ good care of me, Alpha. You did. But it doesn’t matter.” The words are like glass in her mouth. “We’re at war. None of it matters. I belong to the Resistance.”

His eyes flash with anger. “There won’t be any Resistance for you to belong to. I’ll destroy it. All of it.”

“That’s never going to happen.”

“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen, Omega.” Fingers skirt down her sides, along her exposed ribcage, and despite herself, Rey arches helplessly into his touch. “I’m going to peel these clothes off of you. Piece by piece. I’m going to touch you everywhere. Until every inch of your skin knows the shape of my mouth. And then I’m going to fuck you until you never want to leave my bed again.”

Rey feels as though she’s missed a step on a flight of stairs, like he’s won an argument she didn’t know they’d been fighting. Her breath stutters in her lungs, warmth spreading up her throat and across her face, and those dark eyes follow its movement hungrily. “Kylo –"

“Tell me you don’t want that.”

“It doesn’t matter what I want.”

“I’m going to give you _everything_ you want, Omega,” he breathes, staring down at her. “Everything.”

Even though she’s the one bound beneath him, Rey feels… _powerful._ It’s intoxicating. She swallows, deciding to test the waters. “I want you to untie me from me this stupid chair.”

“In a moment.” He dips down, and suddenly his mouth is at her ear, tongue dragging along its shell. “I have other plans for you first.”

A tiny, desperate sound leaves her throat. When his lips find the smooth, pink skin under her ear, teasing it open, the sound twists into a moan.

“Tell me you don’t want this,” he murmurs against her neck. “Tell me.”

“I - ah –"  _Fuck._  His tongue is tracing the swollen edges of her scent gland. Rey’s entire body goes limp in response, melting into the chair – head lolling backward in a wordless plea.

“You certainly taste like you do.”

Something cold and metal grazes her collar, and suddenly her shirt is stretching at the shoulders as he uses one of her knives – _her own fucking knives_ – to slice it straight down the middle. Cool air washes over her naked skin, drawing an indignant yelp from her as her brain catches up to whatever the fuck just happened. But before she can protest, Kylo is moving down her body, kneeling between her knees so that he can press his mouth hotly against her bare collarbone.

“Tell me you want this, Omega.” His eyes are nearly black with lust, looking up at her through his lashes as his fingers push up her cupless bra. Rey’s breathing is uncontrollably loud, her arms still straining behind her back. “Say it.”

She doesn’t seem to process that he has even asked her a question until his lips are hovering over her naked breast, dark gaze searching her face for an answer they both already know.

“Fuck you, Kylo Ren.” Her voice is trembling, empty of any true venom. “Yes, Alpha, _yes – of course_ I want it –"

The hot swipe of his tongue across her nipple is the answer to a prayer Rey didn’t know she’d been offering. She twists uselessly against the restraints, gasping, as he begins a back-and-forth motion that is breathtakingly reminiscent of the _other_ ways he’s used his mouth on her. Her cunt clenches sympathetically, a spasm of anticipation.

But Kylo does not seem to be in any rush. He is taking his sweet, sweet time driving her out of her mind with just the tip of his tongue and the cluster of nerve endings at the peak of her breast. Occasionally, his teeth graze sensitive skin – too often to be accidental – and Rey cries out helplessly in response, writhing against the binders that hold her fast to her chair. She has never paid much attention to her tits before, and now she is gasping with the enormity of the sensation – her entire being honed in on the shivery, sensitive place where his lips coax such dizzying pleasure from her skin.

At some point, he moves to her other breast and dedicates himself to making her fall apart all over again. Behind her, Rey’s fingers _twitch_ with the need to run through his hair and pull him closer. Broken words are falling from her lips in a steady stream of breathless pleas – _yes_ and _Alpha_ and _more._

In a rapid movement, Kylo surges up against her and finds her mouth. His lips are swollen and red as they kiss her, deeply, and Rey whines against his mouth in response. When he pulls away to pant against her mouth, his eyes are dark and wild.

“Tell me you won’t leave this time.”

Rey suddenly can't remember how to form words, and his hand is fisting in her hair again, bright pain swirling with the heady pleasure in the air – as though he can claw the promise out of her. “Tell me, Rey. You won’t leave. You will stay with your Alpha.”

“My Alpha,” she repeats between gasps, and he’s buried in her throat again, drinking in her scent. “Yes, Alpha. _Yes._ Whatever you –  _ah_ – want –  _please –“_

And in the delirious pleasure of that moment, she wonders if either of them actually believe it.

It doesn’t matter. Kylo’s fingers are working deftly at the fastenings of her trousers, and then he hooks his thumbs in both her pants and underwear and shucks them down her legs. When he catches sight of her dripping all over the seat of the wooden chair, he lets out a desperate groan, spreading her knees for a better look.

“You have no idea,” he rasps, _“– no idea_ – how much I’ve thought about this.”

Rey opens her mouth to let him know that – yes, she’s thought about this quite a bit too – but the words dry up when he leans forward and actually begins to _lap up the slick_ that has dribbled onto the chair. Watching her, his brown irises are nearly swallowed by the blackness of his pupils; on her next inhale, Rey is hit with the brick wall of his arousal – the head-spinning taste of an Alpha – _her_ Alpha – ready to knot.

But he doesn’t move to fuck her. Not yet.

The first flick of his tongue across her clit has Rey arching off the chair with a shattered cry, held back only by her restraints. Large hands grasp her thighs and force them wider, his head a dark mop of curls between them as he groans against her sex. Rey has never felt so exposed in her entire life. Arms trapped behind her back, legs spread open under his bruising grip, she is completely vulnerable to this man’s terrible whims.

Thankfully, his whims all seem to hinge upon bringing Rey to orgasm as quickly as possible.

His movements have lost any of the tortured patience of their first encounter. Kylo works her body deliberately, with singular, streamlined intention. He releases his grasp on one thigh to slip a large finger into her, fucking her with it as his tongue continues its relentless rhythm against her clit.

Rey can hardly recognize herself. She is a gasping mess of whimpers and pleas, twisting on the chair, desperate to have him. It’s too much, too fast. Her skinaches and throbs with helpless need for his touch, even as she is drowning in it. And all the while, the heavy weight of his eyes on her face keep her pinned more effectively than any physical restraint, somehow driving deeper into her than his thick fingers, still pumping in and out and in and out –

Her climax slams into her unexpectedly, as though her body has been strung up and waiting since the last time he had her. Rey shakes herself apart on the chair, fingers curling and grasping at nothing in the air behind her. When her thoughts begin to clear, she is shocked to find that Kylo is still between her legs - and that she is breathless with need to let him fuck her.

“Please, Alpha,” she pants, writhing in her restraints. He needs to release her in order to get her onto the bed, and suddenly that’s all Rey can think about. “Please – the binders -“

“We’re almost there, little one.” He presses a slow, wet kiss to her dripping slit, and Rey nearly cries out with despair. “Just one more. You’re being so good for me.”

She only has a moment to process what he’s talking about before he’s wrapping his beautiful lips around her clit again, and then Rey can only let her head fall back in a soundless scream.

By the time Kylo wrenches a second orgasm from her trembling body, Rey feels like she’s floating down from another plane of existence. She is flushed from head to toe, sweat damp and cool on her brow. She barely registers his mouth pressing messy kisses across her face, the skim of his fingertips on her forearms. Distantly, there is a clattering noise, and then her wrists are freed from their unnatural angle behind her back, shoulders aching with relief.

Massive arms gather her up against Kylo’s chest. Rey breathes in the smell of him deeply, letting her head grow dizzy with it. The gland on his throat is angry and red, just a few inches away from her face, and she can’t help but lean forward and lap at it with her tongue.

 _”Omega,”_ he rasps. She only licks him for a moment, his jaw working tensely against her hair, before he is yanking her away and laying her out across the blanket. His eyes rake up and down her body like she is a feast he wants to devour, and Rey stretches out lazily before him, bones still humming with the satisfaction he’s brought her.

“This is the part where I fuck you,” Kylo says, starting to undress. “And then comes the part where you never leave my bed.” He lifts his shirt over his head, Rey feels her satisfaction morph into something restless and potent again. She didn’t see him naked last time – barely got him out of his pants – and she can’t understand why he would have denied her the pleasure. His chest is huge, miles of creamy pale skin stretched over thick muscle. She wonders what it would feel like to have him crushed against her, all that brawn and muscle moving against her body.

When her eyes catch on a bandage wrapped around the left side of his ribcage, Rey is overwhelmed by the memory of blaster fire lighting his face as she pulled the trigger.

She sits up abruptly. “You’re hurt.”

By now, Kylo is stepping out of his pants, and then he is completely naked before her. It takes him a moment to realize what she’s talking about – his fingers find the bandage with confusion, as though he’s noticing it for the first time – and then he laughs, a shockingly genuine sound.

“You can make it up to me,” he murmurs, crawling on top of her and caging her in with his broad body.

So she does.

* * *

Evening has fallen across the mountains. Dusk turns the snow outside orange, then purple, then obscures it in shadow altogether. In his arms, the little rebel girl is soft and boneless, her skin still flushed from their fucking.

She is only pretending to sleep, but Ben watches her anyway. He wants to watch her for an eternity, even if it’s only like this, on the edge of sleep – her eyelashes dark against her pink cheeks, lips parted, hair mussed and wild around her.

This was not how he had planned for his interrogation to go. He finds he doesn’t care.

Long minutes pass before his knot starts to soften, and a sigh leaves him as he slips out of her. Her thighs are wet and sticky with the combined mess of their fluids. Ben would bury his head between them and lick it all up if he could bear to tear his eyes away from her face.

He had never planned to take an Omega. Such pleasures were for other people – people with quiet lives, curly-headed children, and jobs that don’t involve murdering people. But Ben can see that his life will never be the same after this. Or perhaps it had already started changing some weeks ago, when he arrived home from that extended mission and realized he was not alone.

Snoke will not be pleased, of course. But Ben is ready to fight for his little thief, curled up so warm and soft in his arms. She certainly has enough fight in herself. The memory of her sparring with his troopers, fending off dozens of his most skilled fighters, sends a thrill down his spine.

“You’re wasted on the Resistance,” he murmurs, tracing her lips with his fingers. She breathes out heavily, and Ben wonders if she really is sleeping.

She isn’t, of course. When – many minutes later – his eyes have fallen shut and the mattress dips, he is not surprised to feel her slowly disentangle their limbs, padding silently across the room and out the door.

Ben gives her a few moments before he follows.

When he finds her, she is standing with her back to him at the front door, thrown wide open to the storm. Her small body is swallowed by a blanket that Ben recognizes from his mother’s favorite chair. Around her, snow swirls and gusts with the wind.

She doesn’t jump when he presses his body against her back, breathing deeply into her hair.

“I can’t stay here.” Rey does not look at him while she speaks. Her voice is full of regret.

“You won’t get very far in this storm.”

“After the storm, then.” Her eyes flutter shut as he folds her in his arms, leaning back against him. “I’ll need to get back to my friends.”

Ben bites his tongue, an unexpected surge of anger at the thought of anyone else possessing her this way. But the reality of their situation soothes his jealousy. Whatever she may think, Rey is never going to see her friends again.

“They’ll look for me,” she repeats, an echo of her previous insistence. Ben breathes out steadily into her hair, cold wind whipping at his face.

“I’m sure they will.”

“You’re not a very good interrogator.” Rey wriggles in his arms to look up at him, and Ben’s heart lurches at the sight of her tiny face, twisted up in a frown.

 _That’s because I don’t want to interrogate you,_ he thinks. _I want you to join me._

“Let me take you back to bed, Rey,” he murmurs, dipping down to meet her lips. She trembles exquisitely in the circle of his arms. “This can all wait. It’s just us here.”

“How do you know I won’t murder you in your sleep?”

Ben smirks against her mouth. “I know.”

"And how do I know you won't tie me to a chair again?"

"You didn't seem to mind so much."

Her delicate throat bobs as she swallows, and that lovely flush starts crawling up her neck again. Ben wants to lick it.

"You're not going anywhere tonight," he tells her, powdered snow swirling in the mouth of the door. "Let's go back to bed."

Rey burrows deeper into the warmth of his body. When she finally speaks, she doesn't look at him. "Just until the storm is passed. And afterward, we can go back to being..."

She trails off, as though she doesn’t know how to describe this strange thing they share. She has never been his enemy, he knows – just as much as he knows he will never allow her to be separated from him again.

Ben answers her unfinished question her with a kiss, brushed tenderly against her parted lips. "Come back to bed, Omega.”

They walk through the cabin together, the ghosts of his childhood whispering around him as they cross the floorboards on bare feet. No one will come for her here, Ben knows. Any knowledge of this place’s existence vanished with Snoke’s execution of his parents a decade prior.

And when the storm clears enough for her to entertain thoughts of leaving, the attack will have already been carried out. The Rebellion will be finished.

Rey will have no Resistance to return to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *casually increases the chapter count*
> 
> Holy cow, this chapter ended up way longer than I planned. Just like the rest of this trash story. Whoops.
> 
> Your comments and support have been giving me so much life. I can't thank you guys enough for all of the encouragement. There were a lot of moments in this chapter where I was tearing out my hair with frustration over these two, and the incredible amount of support I've received has really kept me working hard at this story. Many, many thanks to every single one of you <3
> 
> (Also come say hi on tumblr - [@ohwise1ne](https://ohwise1ne.tumblr.com))


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A great big thank you to KyloTrashForever for finding all my typos and being the best beta in the world.
> 
> Also check out this [beautiful moodboard](https://ohwise1ne.tumblr.com/post/180600998404/little-thieves-an-alphaomega-au-by-ohwise1ne) from my buddy ladyburrito at TWD.

Growing up in the alleys of the Capital, sleep could be both a luxury and a curse.

For Rey, it was just another thing she needed to steal, like fistfuls of meal packets or crumpled dollars from the snoring drunks in the blacklight district. Her mental map of safe spaces still occupies some dusty corner in her memory – all of them dark and private, all with multiples points of escape.

Wrapped around her backpack, fingers curled around her switchblade, Rey always loathed the vulnerability of such fitful rest. It was a risk she’d never take for more than a few hours at a time, always with one foot planted firmly in the waking world. Ready to spring to her feet and slice open the fool who was trying to rob her. Or worse.

It’s been two years since she exchanged piss-stained concrete and fire escapes for the women’s quarters at the Resistance base. There, her bunk is more a collection of packing crates and blankets than a bed – but it’s a vast improvement from curling up on the sidewalk. Sleep still doesn’t come easy. The room is too quiet, even with Rose’s soft snoring in the bunk to her left. Rey spends her nights half-anticipating the inevitable roar of gunfire and explosions – some sign that the First Order has finally found them.

The First Order _has_ found her, now. She’s lying here, wrapped in the arms of its deadliest soldier.

And somehow, sleep has never come easier.

It’s the bed, she tells herself. Warm, soft and comfortable. The mattress is like a cloud. Rey has never had the opportunity to rest in a bed like this all her life.

It definitely isn’t the sensation of this Alpha’s sleep-warm skin, pressed flush against her. It’s not the soothing weight of his limbs, thrown heavily across her naked body.

And it’s _definitely_ not his scent, pine needles and dark leather, wrapping her up like so many blankets. A warm cocoon of protection that she never wants to leave. _You are safe here,_ it whispers up her spine. _Alpha will keep you safe. Alpha will protect you._

Gray light filters through the window, muted by the falling snow outside. Beside her, Kylo Ren is soft with sleep. He seems almost – peaceful, like this. Vulnerable. Rey can imagine what he looked like as a boy. Before he ever picked up a weapon with the intent to kill.

He’s not bad-looking, for an Alpha. Rey shifts a little in his arms to get a better look at him. Most of the Alphas she’s met are like Poe – classically handsome, symmetrical features, bright and charming smiles. Not Rey’s type. She never thought she had a _type_ – never thought she’d ever find attraction for anyone, really. Attraction seemed like a choice, a luxury for people with easier lives. Rey never thought she’d have the time or interest for such things.

That was before the universe deposited her into Kylo Ren’s bedroom.

He is beautiful, really. If she’s being honest with herself. She lets her eyes roam over him openly, across the wide, creamy muscles of his chest, pale against the dark blanket – up the cords of his neck, which had tensed and strained while he fucked her up the bed the night before. The pink skin under his ear makes her flush with some unnamed feeling, and she doesn’t allow her gaze to linger there. Instead, she observes how dark his eyelashes are against his pale cheek. The beauty marks sprinkled across his skin. His plump lips, still rosy from licking her to orgasm after orgasm.

He’s beautiful, when he’s sleeping. When he’s not threatening to kill all her friends and destroy the only family she’s ever known.

Something hardens inside her heart. Yes, Kylo Ren is obscenely attractive. Just the sight of him sleeping is enough to make her insides squirm and twist. And when he’s awake, he knows exactly where to touch her until she is pleading wetly for his cock. She won’t deny that there’s something… strange, about the way their bodies react to one another. Like every molecule of her body has been perfectly constructed to match its equivalent in his.

But she will likely have to kill this man, one day. And as difficult as that will be, it will be downright impossible if she doesn’t get the hell out of his little sex cabin and back to her friends.

With a stealth that can only be acquired from years of plucking wallets from unsuspecting pockets, she slowly, carefully slips out from under his heavy arm. The Omega inside her _writhes_ with despair as the heat of his skin leaves her. But Rey has lived her entire life in denial – of food, of comfort. Of pleasure.

She slides out of bed.

Kylo has tucked his blaster under the bedframe, its metal grip glinting in the light that spills beneath the bed. Rey briefly imagines pulling it out, aiming it at the sleeping giant sprawled across the mattress. It would be so easy.

Instead, she finds her leather pouch, dumped carelessly on the ground by the dark fireplace. Her trusty switchblade is buried deep in the rear pocket. It’s been years since she needed it – she’s graduated to far more effective blades – but she can’t very well walk around with her pouch here, her knives pressed securely to her hip, when he insists on keeping her naked. Her old switchblade will have to do.

Once it’s hidden, she returns to her bag to tie it shut – and is surprised to feel the shape of her phone in its pocket.

Rey glances over her shoulder to make sure Kylo is still motionless on the bed. Heart pounding, she pulls it out. Eight percent battery. With trembling fingers, she unlocks it and taps out a hurried message to Poe.

_"Omega.”_

Rey nearly drops the bag like she’s been scalded. But when she whirls around, he’s still in bed. Not even looking at her. She gets an eyeful of his expansive back – muscles rippling under skin as his long limbs stretch out across the bed, cat-like. Grasping toward where she’d been sleeping a few moments ago, his scent reaching for her. It makes her stomach tremble.

Silent and slow, Rey sets the bag back on the floor. Her mind is whirling, producing a thousand half-mad justifications. She could be here for a while. She might as well keep him as complacent as she can. This is the only way she’ll retain as much control over this insane situation as possible.

And if her skin is suddenly buzzing with the need to be crushed against him again - well, that’s just a convenient perk.

She’s halfway to the bed when he sits up. The blanket falls into his lap, and Rey’s heart flips over. He is – really very big, this Alpha. _So strong._ Miles of muscle and smooth skin, interrupted only by a narrow streak of dark hair that starts near his navel and disappears beneath the sheets.

“Where did you go?” His voice is rumbly with sleep. Rey shivers.

“Some of us aren’t used to lazing around in bed all morning.”

She hardly realizes she is moving up the mattress until she is practically perched in his lap.

His palms smooth up her back, warm and large. Tipping his face into the crook of her neck, he plants a hot kiss, just below her scent gland.

“I’m going to have to tie you to this bed if you keep leaving it."

“You wouldn’t dare.” It comes out breathier than she intended.

“It'd be better than the chair. I wouldn’t need to untie you this way. Keep you spread wide open for me while I fuck you.”

Kylo’s voice is incredibly deep this early in the morning. It's unfair what it does to her - vibrating through her entire body, along her spine and deep into her trembling center.

 _Please your Alpha,_ her reptile-brain is murmuring. And because Rey has completely lost it, her rational mind isn’t putting up much of an argument.

Shifting, she lets her knees slide around his hips, so that she can feel him clearly through the blankets – already so hard for her. Summoning her courage, she leans in to let her lips trace his ear.

“But then you couldn’t put my hands to good use, Alpha.”

When her fingers find his straining arousal, pulling it free from the sheets, Kylo lets out a shuddering groan. Wetting her lips, she wraps her hand around him – her fingertips barely meet around his girth – and gives an experimental tug.

 _“Rey,”_ he hisses, his teeth scraping at her shoulder. She jerks in his arms at the sensation - or perhaps it's the quivering shape of her name in his mouth. The scent of his arousal is enveloping her, heady and demanding. She trembles against his warm chest, a thick wall of muscle that holds her upright.

“Please, Alpha,” she whispers. “Let me please you.”

His cock is hot and velvety in her fingers. She finds she likes the way the skin slides along the hardness beneath, up and down, up and down. Kylo’s breathing is uneven against her neck, puffs of damp air. His fingers clench sporadically at her hips, sliding up to her ribs and then back down again. As though he can’t keep still.

When her thumb swipes over the head of his cock – wetness catching her fingertip along the way – Kylo buries his forehead in her shoulder, groaning incoherently. So she does it again, and slick pools between her legs at the way his fingers dig a little too tight into her hips.

He’s panting now, pressing messy kisses against her collarbone. Rey has started to speed up without realizing it, fisting the whole length of him - and _fuck_ is he big, how did they ever make this fit inside of her –?

She realizes she must have spoken aloud, because he growls – a wolfish sound – and halts her wrist with an iron grip.

“Stop your teasing, little one, and I’ll show you.”

Kylo’s eyes are blown completely black when he pulls away from her throat, bruises blossoming in the wake of his punishing kisses. The look in his eyes demands that she stay put, but instead, Rey lifts her hips from his thighs and tilts forward, so that her sex is hovering directly over him.

He goes completely still beneath her.

The lips of her cunt – still so sensitive from last night – are dripping with slick as they rub over the head of him. Rey’s eyes flutter at the sensation, and his fingers begin twitching against her skin, as though he’s fighting very hard not to move. When she begins to sink down onto him, they wrap possessively around her waist. His mouth falls open as he watches her, eyes avid and dark, leaning against the headboard.

Inch by inch, she swallows him. The angle is deeper this way, and it takes her a few moments to adjust. She gives a few wriggles up and down, impaling herself further each time, and he huffs out little breaths in response. One of his hands skims up her back to tangle in her hair, but his touch is gentle, reassuring. She leans forward so that she can press her forehead against his.

When he finally – _finally_ – bottoms out, her ass meeting his thighs, Rey is panting in his lap, sweat beading on her brow.

“So, so good for me,” his murmured words brush his lips up against her own. “Taking me so good, such a good girl.”

This small praise sparks off some deep and ancient pleasure within her. Rey moans helplessly, fluttering around his cock. His mouth swallows up her noises as she begins to move.

It’s slow at first. She is stuffed so full of him that every sensation seems amplified, and each time she sinks back down, it’s like she’s being impaled for the first time again. But slick soon starts to run down her thighs, and Rey realizes this isn’t nearly enough. Leaning back, she braces her hands against his shoulders. Rolls her hips, forward and back. And then she begins to ride him.

From his place against the headboard, Kylo watches her every movement with fire in his eyes. In the wan morning light, Rey notices for the first time how his face starts to flush while they’re fucking like this. How the color spreads across his cheeks as he watches his Omega pleasure herself on his cock.

When she reaches down with grasping fingers to rub at her clit, he suddenly halts her movements, hand flying up to crush her wrist in his grasp.

"Greedy little Omega's forgotten her manners."

Leaning forward, Kylo wrestles with her briefly until both her arms are pinned behind her back with one large hand. The movement brings him impossibly deeper inside her, and Rey _whines_ at how full she feels. This man is so massive that – even with her perched above his lap – he is still looking down at her as he chases her backward.

"Did I give you permission to touch my pretty little cunt?"

This clear implication of ownership should outrage her. Instead, the words travel like snapping fire down her spine, and fresh slick leaks out of her entrance, stretched wide to accommodate him. She whimpers.

A dark chuckles vibrates through him. His free hand slides around to her back - and then lower. Lower still. And even lower, until his fingers are slowly stroking the tight skin just below the place where he is currently splitting her in half.

"Did I give you permission to make a mess all over my cock like this?"

His words, lazy and rough with sleep, are a strange contrast to the firm, measured way he's stroking her lips, stretched taut around him.

"Kylo," and god, her voice is a pathetic, quavering thing, "please, you said you would fuck me -"

"Is that what's happening here?”

"You were - we were - _please_ -"

"Oh, sweetheart..." A predatory curl of his lips. "You'll know when I'm fucking you."

Rey whines, attempting to move herself on his cock – but he yanks on her arms, bending her further backwards and holding her fast. His tongue licks a long, hot line up the middle of her exposed throat.

“Good girls ask nicely before they take what they want,” he murmurs, holding her perfectly still in his lap. “Tell me what you want, Rey.”

“You _know_ what I want,” she whines, and he smacks her sharply across the rear. The painful shock of it makes her spasm on his cock, seated deep inside her, and she can _smell_ what this does to him – the potent spike of his arousal filling her nostrils. He sucks in a sharp breath, but his eyes are still locked on hers, unblinking.

“Not enough. I want to hear you beg for it.”

Rey has never begged for anything in her life. She has stolen, she has tricked, she has threatened and thieved, but she has never begged.

Until now. She is stuffed so full of him that she can hardly breathe, and still she is trembling with the need for _deeper_ and _further_ and _more_.

“Please," her voice strains on the edge of a gasp. "If you don't start fucking me - _please,_ Alpha - I need you to move, I’m so _full_ but I need – I need _more_ – I –“

“Do you want me to fuck you, Rey?”

 _”God_ yes, Alpha, I need it, I need it so badly –”

“You want to come all over my knot, little Omega?”

 _“Yes,”_ Rey chokes on a sob, rocking uselessly against him. His grip is too strong, holding her fast – she can’t find any relief. “Please, _please_ yes – what do I need to _do_ –”

“Let’s start with what _not_ to do.” Kylo’s voice has dropped dangerously low, and something in his scent shifts. “Good girls who want to come don’t sneak out of bed to text another Alpha.”

Rey’s blood runs cold. She freezes in his lap, completely still. “Kylo… I didn’t –“

“How many times do I have to tell you not to lie?” He sounds like a cat toying with its prey. Rey’s heart flutters in her ribs like a caged bird. The hand that’s not trapping her arms strokes her damp hair from her cheek, and he studies her face, bemused. “Such a pretty little liar. What are we going to do with you?”

“I didn’t send it,” she whispers.

“You did, but it doesn’t matter. Your messages all come through my phone now.”

Wetness springs to the corner of her eyes – from the deep burn of him or the futility of her situation, Rey doesn’t know.

“The filthy traitors are very concerned about you, you know. Haven’t stopped trying to contact you.”

“Don’t talk about my friends that way,” she hisses.

“What would they say if they saw you like this, stretched and squirming around my cock?”

Rey opens her mouth to curse at him, but he suddenly moves inside her, one shallow thrust. Stars explode behind her eyes, and her curse is lost to a whimper.

“There’s my good girl. You know where you belong.”

He finally releases her arms, only to pull her flush against his chest. The movement crushes her naked breasts against unyielding muscle, his skin so delicious and warm all around her. The Omega inside of her _writhes_ at the sensation of being so utterly surrounded by her Alpha.

“What’s the matter, little one?” He begins to thrust shallowly into her, murmuring in her ear. There’s not enough room for him to fuck her fully, but the friction is just enough to make her whine. “You were singing so pretty for me before.”

“Maybe I – changed my mind,” she says, breath hitching as he pulls her up and down, up and down.

“I don’t think so,” he murmurs hotly in her ear. “Tell yourself whatever you’d like, Rey, but I know the truth.”

When he flips her over to start fucking her in earnest, Rey doesn’t argue.

* * *

He should punish her, for betraying his trust so quickly. He should pull out of her hungry body and leave her desperate and wanting, bereft without her Alpha. Show her what her life would be without him there to please her.

But Rey has started to whimper and plead beneath him. Her scent is a cacophony of need and frustration and uncontrollable desire.

Ben cannot bring himself to deny her.

When she comes, it is with his name on her pretty pink lips, her fingernails breaking the skin on his back as she grasps at him. Like he is an anchor, holding her fast as her orgasm crashes over her. Her face is rosy with pleasure, a mottled flush that extends all the way to her little tits, which bounce with his rough fucking.

But it’s her eyes that bring him over the edge. Her eyes, wide and dilated, blinking up at him like he is a god.

He’s not sure how long he holds her, wrapped in shivery pleasure, as he continues to empty his spend into her body. His knot always takes a few minutes to subside, but time is lost to his sweet girl, so fierce and lovely in his arms.

“Why are we doing this?” Her voice is so soft and broken, barely more than a whisper.

Ben raises his head from her shoulder to look at her. _Because you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Because I haven’t stopped thinking about you since you tried to rob my house. Because I haven’t cared about anything in a long time, but I would burn cities to the ground to keep you with me._

His fingers skirt across her brow. “To me, there is no other choice.”

Ben dresses her in a plaid shirt and sweatpants that belonged to a stranger from some other life. The sight of her – cheeks warm with the remnants of her pleasure, swimming in Benjamin Solo’s old clothes – sparks something strange and possessive in him. He has to force himself not to tear the garments right back off of her.

She sits at his dead mother’s kitchen table as he prepares another meal of roasted oats. Ben wishes he had the foresight to stock the cabinets with food – fresh fish and fruits, cheeses and hot bread. There is nothing here that isn’t non-perishable. How Ben would love to feed her strawberries, watch her small tongue lap the juices from his fingers.

Rey doesn’t seem to mind. She inhales the bowl of oats in heaping spoonfuls, slurping around the utensil like an animal. His look of disgust doesn’t slow her down – in fact, Ben thinks her slurps become even more vulgar.

He is imagining giving her something else to slurp up when she sets the empty bowl down, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “So how do you think this is going to work, exactly?”

Ben slides into the chair beside her with his own steaming bowl of breakfast. To his surprise, the little brat reaches out with her spoon and scoops up some of his own oats. “It’s simple. You will leave your ragtag band of thieves and join the Knights of Ren.”

Rey sputters around her mouthful. “Excuse me?”

“The Knights will offer you far more opportunity than your mob of terrorists.”

“That’s not what I…” She is blinking at him, oats dripping off the spoon onto the table. “The Knights would never take someone like me. I have no training. I’m a street thief.”

“You have immense potential, Rey. I watched you cut down a dozen of my troopers. Your technique is crude, but I am confident you will improve with a firm hand. You need a teacher.”

A number of emotions play across her face, so open and vulnerable to him. “You’re assuming a lot, Kylo Ren. I would never join the First Order.”

“I’m not asking you to join the First Order,” he says softly. “I’m asking you to join _me.”_

She looks at him as though he’s lost his mind.

“The Supreme Leader is nearing the end of his time on this earth. When that day comes, our people will need a leader.” Ben leans toward her. “I will be that leader.”

She laughs, slightly hysterical, and shakes her head frantically. “You’re speaking treason, Kylo. I wouldn’t even talk that way.”

“I’m speaking the truth. Join me, Rey. We will bring order to this place. You will be my first in command. My most skillful fighter.” He licks his lips. “My Omega.”

Rey stares at him for a more few beats. Ben can _smell_ the uncertainty, rolling off of her. The desire. She shakes her head again. “You’re insane.”

“You’ll have everything you could ever want.”

“I don’t want _that.”_

“We’ll see.”

Ben scoops up another spoonful of oats, but brings it to her mouth instead. She accepts it without hesitation, leaning forward. He watches her pink tongue slide under the bottom of the spoon.

“I’ll take such good care of you, little one.” His tone is soft. “Let me take care of you.”

When Ben follows the spoon with a hungry kiss, she doesn’t pull away.

* * *

That night, Rey does not sleep.

She should be exhausted, after the day she’s had. She has never gone through a heat, but she wonders if this is what it’s like, this mad, insatiable desire that pulls her into this Alpha’s arms again and again. If she doesn’t get out of here soon and resume her suppressants, she might find out.

The thought should terrify her. Rey has heard about heats from the women who sell her pills down by the docks. It’s why she chooses the most effective medication possible, even if it means going without food to pony up the cash. You lose your mind – your sense of self. There is only the all-consuming hunger for your Alpha’s knot.

But for this Alpha… Something in Rey’s belly squirms, hot and liquid. Kylo Ren would see her through her heat. He might even make her enjoy it.

Outside, the moonlight sparkles across untouched snow. The winds have started to falter over the past few hours, the snowfall thinning.

Rey saw the speeder bike the night before, parked under a tarp that flapped in the snowy wind. She should be able to hotwire the engine, once the storm clears enough for her to drive. From the looks of the world outside their window, that could be as soon as tomorrow morning.

Kylo huffs a sigh into her hair. Rey’s head is tucked under his chin, her limbs curled into his naked chest. Beneath her ear, his heart beats a slow, steady rhythm. She wonders how many others have left their imprint there. If another Omega will fill its chambers once she leaves.

Tomorrow, she will find the warmest clothes that are stored in these musty closets. She will wait until he is distracted – showering, perhaps, or when night has fallen and his eyes grow heavy. She will grab the blaster from under his bed, sling her pouch over her shoulder and make her escape. She’ll have at least a few hours head start – he won’t be able to follow her without a vehicle.

The next time she meets Kylo Ren, perhaps she will be brave enough to pull the trigger without aiming to miss.

But tonight, her Alpha is warm and content beneath her. His breath feathers through her hair. She hears his heart and knows every beat is all for her. He told her as much, the last time he filled her up with his warmth, cupping her face between his fingers. _My lovely warrior,_ he’d murmured into her lips, _my brave, sweet girl._

Tonight, Rey won’t sleep. She wants to remember everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just going to keep increasing the chapter count with every update because I'm obsessed with this story and have no self-control 😂
> 
> This chapter took longer than I expected but I so appreciate your patience. Thanksgiving was super crazy and I also spent some time updating my other story, [A Good Fall](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16368242/chapters/38305415), if you want to check that out as well.
> 
> Thank you everyone for all the incredible feedback you've been giving me. I still can't get over how many people are enjoying this story. You are such amazing readers and I am not worthy of you.
> 
> (come say hi on tumblr!! I figured out how to turn on anon commenting so I'm not an old lady anymore. [@ohwise1ne](https://ohwise1ne.tumblr.com))


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steam rises all around them. The water’s surface is almost glassy in its stillness. Almost – but for the tiny ripples of Ben’s movements as he slowly touches the girl sprawled between his legs.

 

Steam rises all around them. The water’s surface is almost glassy in its stillness. Almost – but for the tiny ripples of Ben’s movements as he slowly touches the girl sprawled between his legs.

They’ve been submerged here for so long that their hands and toes have started to wrinkle. Ben can’t bring himself to climb out. How could he, with Rey so desperate and sweet, her damp head lolling back against his chest?

Beneath his fingers, her perfect little nipple has been teased until it is dark pink and straining for his touch. Back and forth, he flicks and flicks a lazy, endless rhythm. He has long since lost track of the time they’ve been sitting here – _flick_ – Rey squirming and thrashing between his thighs – _flick –_ trying _so_ very hard to keep still for him. To be good, like he told her to.

_Flick. Flick. Flick._

And his beautiful girl simply lets him, making the most delightful little noises. Scrunching up her pretty face with a need so sharp it is almost painful.

Ben knows she likes it that way, just past the edge of discomfort. He can taste how much she likes it – what each tiny brush of his thumb does to her. Her pleasure is as thick as the steam that clouds the air of the small bathroom. Heavy in his lungs.

Another fluttering touch across her nipple, and Rey writhes for just a few moments too long. Without warning, Ben tightens his fingers and _twists,_ producing a high-pitched keen from her lovely mouth. She seizes up in his arms spectacularly, palms rubbing in frantic jerks along his thighs, until he releases and she goes boneless against him once more.

“What did I tell you?” His thumb resumes its languid rhythm, back and forth. Back and forth. Soothing. _Deceptive._

“I’m trying.” His Rey sounds so broken and needy. So utterly _his._

“You’ll have to try harder, little one.”

“Oh, but it’s – _oh, Kylo,_ it’s – too much –”

“You’re being so very _good_ for me, Rey,” he croons. “Look at you – staying put and taking what your Alpha gives you. Such a good girl. Just a little longer.”

Rey’s breath snags on a whine, and _fuck_ if it doesn’t make him want to scoop her out of the tub and carry her straight to bed. But he needs this. Needs to push her as far as she can go. To show her how completely she belongs to him.

She manages a little while longer – just as she had before, a vicious cycle – before the squirming starts up again. The next time she twists in his arms, Ben pulls his hand away. Rey sobs in momentary relief – and then cries out when his palm lands in an open slap across her nipple, over-sensitive and burning hot.

_“Kylo –”_

The impact makes her breast tremble in his wake _– delicious –_ and how he longs to put his lips to the pale curve of it and taste her. All of her. Ben growls, nose nudging through her wet hair.

“I want to give you what you need, Rey,” he tells her urgently. “Want to give you all of it, over and over. But you need to be good for your Alpha.”

“I’m  _trying_ , but it’s – it’s too much, Alpha, _please,_ I – I don’t think I can –” The words are stretched across hitching breaths. _Yes._ They stroke some ancient satisfaction within him, and Ben… Ben is helpless. Giving one last soothing stroke to the pebbled nub of her nipple, he pulls her closer.

“All right.” His stomach trembles with anticipation as his hand finally slips below the surface of the bath, seeking out the heat between her legs. "All right, little one. But you have to stay put for me.”

“I will, I _will_ , I –” Rey’s grip is like a vice around his knees, but he doesn’t mind. It makes him dizzy in a way that has nothing to do with the steam, seeing how strong a hold he has over this woman. His fierce and lovely Omega.

She stays like that for him, completely still – muscles trembling with the effort. Even when he dips his fingertips between her hot folds. Even when his arousal throbs hungrily against the small of her back at how she _burns_ against his hand. Rey remains so still for him, so obedient and perfect and _his_. Her only movement is her rosy lips, parting and closing as if in silent prayer.

A prayer to him.

He decides to reward her.

She is so tight around his finger that Ben can hardly believe he’s already fucked this woman half a dozen times since they arrived at this cabin. Her muscles flutter, a tight, trembling spasm that pulls him further into her heat, and his cock _aches_ with envy.

“Spread your legs wider for me. Yes. That’s it.”

And she continues to hold herself so still, eyes squeezed shut – face tense with anticipation. Unable to deny himself any longer, Ben ducks his head to drink deeply from her scent gland. Shudders with it. _Yes._

“Wider,” he breathes, and she obeys, chest rising and falling with shaky breaths. “Good girl.”

Slowly, he begins fucking her with one finger. Then two. His voice is husky in her ear, thick with his own need. Thick with his unmistakable desire to bend her over the nearest surface and fuck her until she can feel his knot in her throat.

But first he needs to show her. She needs to understand how good they can be together, if she does what he tells her.

The angle is awkward – he has to reach under her thigh for proper access, and there is not enough room in the tub for him to fuck her the way he’d like – to slam the heel of his palm against her with each plunge. So instead he curls his fingers deep inside her, buries them until the knuckles at their base are nudging at her entrance. Until his fingertips are rubbing against that bit of spongey tissue which always draws such filthy noises from her mouth. He begins a steady rocking motion, palm cupping the rest of her cunt, that quickly has her pleading breathlessly in his arms.

“Look how good this is, when you listen to your Alpha,” he rasps into her wet, tangled hair. “Look at how much you love this.”

 _”Yes.”_ Rey’s face is completely pink as she gasps and shivers. Struggling so sweetly not to move.  _All for him._

“It feels good to do as you're told, doesn’t it?”

 _”God,_ yes – so good Alpha, feels so so _so_ good –”

“My filthy girl. You’re going to come just like this, all over my hand.”

“Ah – _please – yesss –”_

The bath is turning lukewarm, but his Omega radiates heat in his arms, water sloshing gently against the sides. It’s the only sound, apart from their labored breathing. Apart from Rey’s tiny whimpers and moans. Her small body jerks and shudders as he skims his other hand, feather-light, over her breast. Indulging himself, Ben gives one last pinch to her tortured nipple, which produces a ragged intake of breath – then follows the curve of her abdomen, down to her hip. To where he's fucking her between her trembling legs.

Her clit is swollen to the touch. Grasping it gently through the hood, he rolls the tiny bundle of nerves in slow circles between his thumb and forefinger. The whine that she makes in response sends all the blood in his body rushing straight to his cock; his head spins with the sudden lack of oxygen.

It’s a miracle he can continue speaking. Soft and coaxing, his voice is rough with their shared pleasure.

“That’s it. Just like that.”

Rey flexes her fingers uselessly against his knees. Spread wide open for him, her thighs quiver with the effort of her remarkable constraint, almost perfectly motionless where they bend at each side of the tub. His good, _good_ girl.

He can smell how close she is. Urgent and intoxicating, Rey’s scent fills his nostrils. His lungs. Ben can’t get enough of it. Her pleasure is an endless spiral, climbing upward, upward, stretching, reaching –

Rey is mewling his name between sobs now, over and over. His _chosen_ name. It has never sounded so lovely as it does colored by his Omega’s desperation, her plain and insatiable need. Ben presses flush against her back as he works her with steady purpose – one hand milking her tight heat, the other rolling her clit in firm circles between his fingers.

“I could do this all day.” His voice is husky against her wet cheek, her pink ear. “We could stay in this tub and I could keep touching you like this, exactly like this, until you come again. And again. And again. Just for me.”

 _“Ky – lo – ohhhh –”_ _God_ , does he really love to hear his name this way: reduced to two broken, gasping syllables, plucked from her perfect lips. He watches her, transfixed. Utterly infatuated. He’s sure he’s never seen anything so beautiful as her lovely face as it twists and _strains_ on the edge of her orgasm.

That is, until she finally tips over. Ben would not be able to look away even if the house were burning down around them. Her climax takes her by surprise – eyes fluttering open with shock – and then rolling back in her head as her face contorts with delirious pleasure. _Yes._ Pleasure that he has given her. It’s all for him.

He presses messy, wet kisses across the side of her head, her face, her cheeks. Working her through it. Wringing everything she can give him from her hot, twitching cunt.

He doesn’t stop until Rey finally slumps into his arms, boneless and pliant.

“Alpha.” The word comes out like a plea. Rey’s eyes flicker up to meet his, black and dilated with her pleasure. _So trusting._ He thinks she’s going to beg him to stop touching her – she must be so _sensitive_ by now – but then she catches her lip between white teeth. “Your knot, Alpha,” she breathes. “Give me your knot.”

The sudden rush of blood in his ears makes them throb. “So fucking _greedy.”_

Ben hooks an arm under her knees and stands, lifting her from the tub. This causes a great _slosh_ of water to spill out onto the tile. He doesn’t care. His cock is so hard it’s almost painful. If he isn’t fucking her within the next thirty seconds, he might actually implode.

“That wasn’t enough for you, hm?” He pitches the words dark and low, but _oh,_ he is _so pleased._ How well this Omega pleases him. Of course it wasn’t enough.

“I’m just so – so _empty_ ...” She shivers in the sudden rush of cool air, arms clinging to his neck. And then her mouth is at his scent gland, a broad, hot lick that makes his stomach knot with pleasure. “And you’d fill me up so _good_ , Alpha.”

 _His. His. All his._ Ben’s mind is a possessive whirl of sensation as he lays her out across the bed. Rey tries to curl in on herself to protect her naked body from the chill – so offensive after the warmth of their bath – but Ben will have none of it. He grasps her wrists with one large hand, yanking her front to him. Baring her.

She is _his._ His to look at. His to touch. His to tease and torture and please and fuck until she can’t remember why she ever ran away from him.

“We’ll rule the world together, you and I,” he promises as he palms his aching arousal, bumps it up against her sex. Fuck – she’s already dripping again. _For him_. All for him. “We will have everything, Rey.”

She nods beneath him, her mouth trembling with soft little pleas that lick like flames along his cock. _Please,_ and _yes,_ and _yours._

A snap of his hips, and Ben is home.

* * *

Rey means to leave tomorrow. She really does.

But tomorrow turns into the next day, and then the day after that. The sun peeks through the clouds, the winds settle into a lazy breeze, and Rey still finds herself waking up tangled in the warm, massive limbs of her Alpha.

No. Not her Alpha. At least… not most of the time. When his head is buried between her legs, perhaps he is her Alpha then. And maybe also when they are fucking – her body bent in half over the kitchen table, or with her knees chafing on the rug before the hearth.

He is certainly her Alpha when he’s got his fist clenched a little too tight in her hair, the sweet-sharp pain driving her so far out of her mind that she doesn’t care about the way she’s babbling for him. Begging.

And… and in the moments afterward, perhaps. When her cheeks are flaming and damp, and her body is shaking – when he folds her into an embrace that feels like something safer and more precious than anything she’s ever known… Well, Rey supposes he could be her Alpha then too.

But there seems to be something uncomfortable about that particular concession. Something dangerous. The line has to be drawn somewhere, after all. Because he is _not_ her Alpha.

He is Kylo Ren. A _Knight._

And she is with the Resistance.

They argue about this explosively at least once a day. His certainty infuriates her. _It’s not that simple,_ she tells him, over and over. Even if Supreme Leader Snoke were to disappear off the face of the earth tomorrow – a possibility that he discusses with alarming frequency – nothing would change for people like her.

 _You’re with me now,_ he keeps telling her. _That doesn’t matter anymore._

_It matters to me._

They’ve staged this debate in every one of the cabin’s small rooms – all except the master bedroom, which Kylo keeps locked tight. And today, they bring it outdoors, into the blinding November sunlight.

Kylo’s huge frame sways each time the axe makes contact with the log. Standing far enough away to avoid the arc of his swing, Rey wraps her arms around herself, curling into her plush parka.

“A change of leadership isn’t going to make any difference. The problem runs deeper than that.”

 _Thwack._ “You would prefer Snoke over me?”

“Don’t be thick.” The snow comes to just below her knees, but for Kylo, that’s barely halfway up his calf. The icy coldness of it radiates through her boots. “It isn’t that simple. There needs to be a revolution. A _true_ revolution. Dismantle the whole thing and start over again.”

 _Thwack._ “Because _that_ would be so simple?”

“We’ve got to at least try.”

 _Thwack._ “Without the First Order, there would be chaos. Anarchy.”

“And with it, people are still dying on the streets. There’s got to be a different way.”

Kylo doesn’t look at her as he continues swinging, completely focused on his task. He is very single-minded this way, as she’s learned very well over the past few days. Heat rises in her cheeks. Her insides squirm at the image of her Alpha – ( _not_ her Alpha, Kylo Ren) – using his considerable strength to split wood for the fireplace in their little cabin. To keep her warm and cared for.

Rey realizes too late that her scent must be shifting with her thoughts, because Kylo freezes mid-swing. He has been growing more attuned to her emotions with each passing day. Perhaps because he’s learning her nuances – or because her pheromones are much stronger without her pills. Slowly, he lowers the axe.

Rey’s feet carry her through the snow, until she’s standing right in front of him. Kylo’s nostrils flare, and his body tilts toward her. As if on its own accord.

His voice is very husky, misting in the air. “I have no clue why you ever started taking suppressants.”

“Because of Alphas like you.”

“Alphas like me?” he repeats, face darkening. “Who else was there?”

 _This again?_ Rey takes another step toward him. “No one, Kylo. Only you.”

His hands are hidden beneath thick wool gloves, but she lets her fingers play along the fabric at his wrist anyway, right over where she knows his gland is hiding. His throat bobs as he swallows.

Then his eyes widen when, quick as a bolt, Rey snatches the axe from his grip.

It’s heavy, but she heaves it over her shoulder without difficulty. For a moment, there is the potent smell of his alarm in the air, his confusion. But it rapidly melts into awe as she brings the blade down onto the large log, splitting it straight down the middle.

“You’re changing the subject.” Rey heaves the axe backward, then swings it bodily over her shoulder again. The sharp _crack_ of the wood splitting is strangely satisfying. “This empire needs a revolution.”

“You don’t need to do that, you know. I enjoy splitting logs.”

“Well, maybe I enjoy it too.” _Thwack._ “Why should you get to have all the fun?”

“I like taking care of you, Omega.”

 _Thwack._ “I can take care of myself.”

“You’d make an excellent Knight, with some training.”

“And you’d be an excellent rebel.” Rey throws a cheeky smile over her shoulder. “With some training.”

Her smile falters when she processes the look on his face. Dark. Hungry. “Do you have any idea how fucking _good_ you smell?”

“I told you I was taking suppressants before.” Rey allows herself a brief moment of triumph as she turns back to split another log.

But he interrupts her trajectory midway, grasping the handle of the axe before it can complete its swing. Rey scowls, struggling to seize it back – and then freezes when his other hand slips around her front. Pulling her back against him.

“Delicious. You smell delicious.” His fingers are undoing the front of her coat, and Rey is definitely not getting wet in the middle of the woods, with the air cold enough to freeze the slick on her thighs and chunks of snow lodged deep in her boots. Definitely not.

“That’s because I need my pills,” she says weakly.

“You’re never going to take those wretched things again.”

“But then – how will I –“ The faces of her friends back at the Resistance base – many of them Alphas – flicker across her mind. It’s poor etiquette for an unmated Omega to be fraternizing with Alphas without suppressants, if not downright dangerous.

Kylo seems to follow the direction of her thoughts, because his fingers have found their way under her scarf. Brushing against her scent gland.

“There are other ways,” he breathes. “I could mark you, Rey. Everyone would know who you belong to. We would be one and the same.”

Everything is suddenly too hot, even with the snow in her boots. Rey’s grip slackens around the wooden handle, but thankfully Kylo has a firm hold on it; he gently pries it from her fingers and places it against the tree trunk.

 _“Alpha_ …” Those long, elegant fingers are stroking so tenderly against her most private place. Dizzy, Rey leans her head back, giving him more access – even as she denies him. “We can’t.”

“We can.” In one swoop, Kylo scoops her into his arms, lifting her from the ground like she weighs nothing at all. Flailing, Rey sucks in a sharp breath to protest – but it gets trapped on its way out her lungs by the ferocity in his gaze. “We can do whatever we want. We’re going to rule this world together, Rey.”

“You’re insane.”

“Perhaps.” Kylo’s eyes slide down her throat, where she knows her gland is shiny and inflamed from his ministrations.

Rey trails her fingers down his face to his chin, lifting it to meet her gaze. “We can’t.”

For a long moment, Kylo doesn’t respond. As the silence stretches on, Rey begins to worry that he won’t ask for her consent – that he’ll just take what he wants against her will. Even though – Rey’s heart flips over – she’s not completely sure what her will _is._

Then Kylo swallows, jaw twitching. “As you wish.”

Rey traces her fingers against the lips of this beautiful, complicated man. This Alpha who isn’t hers. His eyes flash and he moves his mouth against her fingertips, touching his tongue to the fabric.

“But I’ll have you in every other way instead.”

Kylo Ren carries her effortlessly through the trees, his strides so much longer and quicker without Rey struggling to keep up in the knee-high snow. She clings to his neck, heart racing. Her chest aches with some unknown emotion.

Tomorrow, Rey thinks. She’ll leave him tomorrow.

Shifting her weight in his arms, her Alpha carries her home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience with this update, friends!! I was approaching a climax in my other WIP and needed to spend some time churning out a few chapters.
> 
> Speaking of which: I am doing a terrible job sticking to my outline with this story, so I've tacked a few more chapters onto the final count. I keep falling into these black holes of smut, glancing up at my word counter and realizing I'm 2,000 words deep with no plot. Hopefully no one minds.
> 
> Also I made a twitter [@ohwise1ne](https://twitter.com/ohwise1ne). Follow me for bad jokes and fic previews. 
> 
> Big thanks to KyloTrashForever for the stunning moodboard and for letting me rant at her for hours about abo porn. You're an angel.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only a 3,000-word smut hole this time, guys. Be proud of me.

It starts with the thick quilt on top of the bed.

The fabric drags along the floor as Rey marches into the living room and deposits it before the fireplace. She just wants to be more comfortable. That’s all. Curling up in Kylo’s thick, comfy quilt should do the trick.

But wouldn’t it be better if she had _two_ blankets?

The musty throws draped along the back of the couch are promptly added to her pile. Then come the sheets. And then the spare sheets, tucked in a chest in the corner of the bedroom. When she finds a pile of folded blankets on the top shelf of Kylo’s closet, she feels like she’s hit the jackpot.

A few minutes later, Rey has settled into her small sea of blankets on the floor. Sighing happily, she pulls the quilt to her face and takes a long, deep inhale. _Alpha._ Yes. That’s better. _Much_ better. His scent is like cool water, trickling down the back of her neck. It eases the manic energy that had driven her tearing through the bedroom, stripping the bed and rummaging through the closets. There’s nothing that could make her happier. Nothing, except –

The front door swings open, admitting a blast of arctic night air and powdery snow. Kylo Ren strikes an imposing figure in the doorway – massive arms cradling a bundle of firewood, his face obscured by a black mask to shield his skin from the cold – but Rey is not frightened. She can’t imagine a time when this man ever frightened her.

Kicking the door shut, Kylo crosses the room in half the amount of steps it would have taken her. The wood tumbles a little roughly to the waning pile beside the fireplace.

It’s not until he tears the mask off his face that Rey notices the intensity of his gaze.

“Omega.”

Rey realizes all at once how ridiculous she must look. Slowly, she extracts herself from her mountain of blankets. Her cheeks are aflame with – confusion? Embarrassment?

Kylo tilts his head. Bits of frosty snow make his dark hair glisten, lips rosy from the freezing night outside. “Cold?”

“No, actually.” Rey rubs at her burning neck. “I’m… not sure what’s gotten into me.”

“Really.” Kylo doesn’t look away from her as he slowly pulls off his thick gloves. Finger by finger. “I think I might.”

“I just _love_ these blankets,” Rey sighs, nestling into them despite herself. “The smell of them. Your smell. I like your smell. I – still don’t like _you_ , most of the time, but you smell… so good, Alpha.”

“That’s too bad.” Kylo spreads his gloves carefully atop the hearth to dry. His eyes are almost black when they find her face again. “I like you very much, Rey.”

She sighs, a frustrated sound. “You make it so hard not to like you when you say things like that.”

A dark chuckle. “I can be very convincing when I want to be.” Kylo’s long fingers begin to work at the buttons of his winter coat. “And I know all the ways you like to be convinced.”

A shiver races through her, though it is far too warm in here to feel a chill. “I don’t think we need another log on the fire.”

“Is that so?” Kylo has reached the bottom of his coat. Slowly, he shrugs out of it. Rey has approximately three seconds of sanity before his scent slams into her like a brick wall. Head spinning, she leans back on her hands, skin suddenly very tight. “Are you feeling _hot,_ little Omega?”

Rey can’t breathe. She tries anyway. “Of course I am. It’s a thousand degrees in here.” She hopes to sound impatient. Annoyed. Her voice is too breathy to accomplish either.

“I know something that might help.” Kylo tosses his coat behind him, not even bothering to check if it lands on the sofa. “But you’ll have to take off your clothes.”

 _Oh._ Yes. That’s a good idea, now that Rey’s thinking about it. A _very_ good idea. Hastily, she climbs to her feet – but before she can start to strip, Kylo lifts a large hand.

“Wait.” Eyes still burning into her, he lowers himself to the couch. Kylo Ren arranges himself on its cushions like a king – arm draped along the back of the sofa, foot resting on his knee. A smirk twitches at his lips. “Very good. Now take off your shirt.”

Grasping at the hem, Rey begins to yank it upward, but hesitates when he makes another noise of disapproval.

“Not like that, Rey. Slowly.”

It feels – warmer, somehow, with the heat of his gaze on her like this. Licking her lips, Rey does her best to obey, baring her body to him as slowly as she can bear. Finally, she pulls the shirt over her head, leaving her nude from the waist up.

Rey has been naked before this man more times than she can count in the past week alone. But right now, with his eyes raking over her chest like hot coals, she feels... utterly bare. In a completely different way.

Long moments pass as he appraises her, the wind whistling low outside. It’s not until she starts to squirm that he seems to remember himself.

“Very lovely,” he murmurs. “My lovely girl. You’re going to touch yourself for me now.”

Every bone in Rey’s body is humming, a magnetic pull to the man on the couch. “But I want _you_ to touch me.”

“So demanding.” Kylo tilts his head. “Are you forgetting who’s in charge here, little one?”

A long, shaky breath releases from her lungs. Rey squeezes her eyes shut, then opens them slowly. “Tell me what to do, Alpha.”

This pleases him. She can _smell_ how much this pleases him – a spike of dark arousal in the air. It causes dampness to gather between her thighs, hot and and sticky.

“Yes. Good girl. Now start with your throat.”

Confused, Rey lifts her hand to her neck. His mouth twitches.

“Not there. Higher.” Her fingers trail up her neck. “Higher.”

A shock runs through her as her fingertips brush over her gland.

 _“Yes.”_ The word comes out on a hot breath. He follows the movement with his eyes, utterly enraptured. “Tell me how that feels.”

“It’s sore,” she breathes. “It aches.” Her fingers flutter over the swollen edges of her gland. It is hot to the touch.

“I want to put my mouth there. Want to lick it until you are covered in my scent. Just the thought of your pretty little throat under my teeth… Do you know what that does to me? But you’re going to have to pretend. I don’t trust myself with you right now.”

Rey scrapes her fingernails over the corners. The sensation makes her moan helplessly. From the couch, Kylo drinks in the sight of her with his impossibly dark eyes.

“How close are you to your heat?”

 _Her heat?_ Rey tries to clear her head, but it’s hard enough to think with the fire at her back, the flames in her belly. It’s even harder with her fingers dragging back and forth across her gland, obedient for her Alpha.

“Your heat, Rey. How long do we have?”

“I – don’t know,” she breathes. “I’ve never had one.”

The surge of his excitement is palpable. Her senses are briefly overwhelmed by it – for a moment, Rey can feel exactly what he’s feeling in vivid, grotesque detail. His joy at being the first to take her. His dark satisfaction at the _rightness_ of it all. His heady delight as he imagines all the ways he’ll fuck her through it, at the immense satisfaction he’ll bring his Omega, driving her to the peak of her pleasure over and over and _over_ –

“There are other ways for us to find out.” Kylo’s voice is very rough. “The rest of your clothes. Take them off.”

* * *

Finally naked before him, Rey’s body is dripping with golden firelight. Flushed with the approach of her oncoming heat. The thought makes Ben’s insides feel hot and liquid.

“Like this?” she asks him, so sweetly.

It does things to him, to see her this way. She is so obedient, his little soldier. His strong and capable girl. How he loves to watch her surrender to him, again and again – this woman who has fought to the bone to become what she is.

She should be no one. Yet she stands before him now, full of power and potential. Intoxicating in her strength, even as she strips her soul before him.

She is, in every way, his equal.

“Touch yourself for me, little one. Show me how wet you are.”

It’s a miracle he can keep his voice steady, with her eyes so wide and full of trust. And she obeys. Perhaps it is the whisper of her heat that makes her so compliant – she usually needs more coaxing. Or perhaps it is because she finally knows where she belongs. Even if she won’t admit it yet.

Rey’s fingers trail down her abdomen, through the dark curls at the apex of her thighs. To the slick that is already gathering there, just from baring herself to her Alpha. Completely untouched.

Ben swallows thickly. “You’re still a few days away.”

“How can you tell?”

Between her thighs, Rey is moving her fingers. Slowly – the way he likes her to. He can hear how wet she is already, slick little sounds that go straight to his head.

“Look at how patient you are. Waiting for me to tell you what to do.” He leans forward, watching her avidly. “When you start your heat, there will be no more patience. You’ll be begging for my knot. You’ll feel as though you’re going mad without it. But I won’t let you, Omega. I will fill you up again, and again, until you’re dripping with my seed. I will take _such_ good care of you.”

He likes the way her breasts rise and fall with her breathing. Purple marks speckle her golden skin, places where he’s sunk his teeth a little too deep into her softness.

“If that’s so,” she says breathlessly, “then let me take care of you first.”

And then she is crossing the room, entirely without his permission. He does not have time to reprimand her. Rey sinks to her knees in front of him, little fingers grasping at his pants and undoing the clasps there.

_Oh._

“Let me please you.” Her eyes flick up to his. He has never heard her voice so husky before. “Alpha.”

Rey is a vision before him, her body soft and radiant in the firelight. Kneeling before her Alpha. Where she belongs. _Yes._ His heart pounds heavily in his chest as she pulls his erection from his trousers. It looks obscene, so large and monstrous next to her small, perfect face.

She doesn’t seem to mind.

Her eyes are dark as they examine him, like she is starving. Like she wants to worship him. Her fingertips trail from the tip to the base, feather-light, and Ben’s next exhale is very unsteady.

“My Alpha is so large,” she murmurs, nosing along his length. “So big.”

Fuck. _“Rey…”_

“I’ve heard you feel empty during your heat, but – mmmm – I always feel so _full_ when you fuck me with this. Like there’s no room for anything else.”

“That’s right,” he breathes. _Yes._ He can’t tear his eyes from her pretty pink lips as they follow the path of her fingers, from base to tip, open-mouthed and reverent.

“Do you think…” She pulls back to examine him, that adorable little crease wrinkling her forehead. “Do you think I can fit the whole thing?”

The thought makes Ben’s mouth water. He throbs painfully in her hand. With the back of his knuckles, he caresses her cheek, so soft and warm. “Open up, sweetheart, and we’ll find out.”

Her hot little tongue pokes out to lap at him, kitten-like. It makes his fists clench, his teeth ache. When Rey lowers her mouth to kiss the tip, tongue swiping back and forth, Ben’s eyes threaten to roll back in his head. She wraps her lips there, suckling, tongue swirling experimentally over his glans.

He can only bear such fleeting torture for so long. As gently as he can manage, Ben grasps her chin and pulls her off. Her mouth – it’s already so red. Glistening with spit. His stomach twists pleasantly at the sight.

“Deeper this time,” he tells her. His thumb swipes across her swollen lips. “You can take it.”

And she _nods_ , his sweet girl. Determination furrows her brow as she examines him again. Grasping him at the base, Rey hovers over him for a moment – her warm breath shivering over where she’s already made him wet with spit – and then, abruptly, swallows him as deep as she can go.

Ben chokes on a groan. Heat – wet, delicious heat – envelopes him, so different from how he usually takes her and yet so _good_. Her tongue presses hot on the underside of him as she leans forward, pulling him in as far as she can bear.

His knuckles are turning white where they are fisted in the cushion. He knows that - _god,_ that he can do whatever he wants right now, but he will allow his precious girl time to get used to him. He won’t start driving up into her mouth like a beast, no matter how badly he wants to. No matter if it is his _right_ to have this Omega – _his_ Omega – in whatever way he desires.

But his clever girl knows what he wants. She knows him so well already – how to startle him into laughing, how far to push his buttons. How to pleasure him.

Yes, she knows exactly what he wants.

Rey begins bobbing her head, a crude imitation of fucking. Her hand wraps around the base of him – and he will never, ever get over how her fingertips hardly meet around the middle – as her fist follows the movement of her head.

“Yes.” His voice is thick with desire. Unrecognizable. “Yes, Rey. Just like that.”

But it’s not enough for her. Always full of surprises, she goes deeper than before on the next downward stroke, and then deeper still. He feels himself rut up against the back of her throat at the same moment that she contracts around him, gagging. The noise vibrates along his entire cock, then sparks up his spine like electricity.

Ben pulls her back before he loses control, before his hand can fist in the softness of her hair and force her down even further. He is panting as she looks up at him with huge, wet eyes, wiping her mouth.

“So big,” she says breathlessly, and Ben suddenly notices the wonder in her face. “So fucking _big,_ Kylo, I was – I was _choking_ on you, that’s how full you make me –“

He realizes with a flood of heat that her other hand is between her legs, working furiously. She is – oh god, she is _enjoying_ this.

The growl that tears through his chest cannot be human. This time, Ben does not stop himself from touching her hair, pulling it just the way she likes, just hard enough to draw a tiny gasp from her swollen lips. “Did I say you could stop?”

Her arousal spikes on the air, making his head swim. She loves this, his beautiful girl – loves the way her Alpha provides her with guidance. With control. “No.”

“Then get back on my cock.”

Rey _whimpers_ – and then she is on him again, the wet heat of her mouth like a vice as she moves around him. Ben doesn’t pull his hand away from her hair, now that he knows what she wants – now that he’s paying attention to the sweet throb of her pleasure, heavy in his lungs. She moans helplessly around him when he tightens his grip.

“That’s it,” he croons. “My good girl. You can take it.” The tenderness in his voice is a sharp contrast to the clench of his fist, the wetness in her eyes as she rubs herself. “Swallow for me, sweetheart. I know you can do it. It’ll make it easier for – oh, _fuck,_ Rey, _yes –”_

The moment she opens for him will be seared into his memory for the rest of his life. He will always remember her lips, stretched around the width of him, sinking all the way down to his knot as her hot throat flutters and convulses around him. Taking him as completely as she is able.

When Ben pulls her off of him, she is gasping for breath, face flushed and ruined. His arousal _throbs_ as he hauls her bodily into his lap, kissing her messily, guiding his spit-slick cock to her entrance.

“I’m going to take care of you, Omega,” he gasps into the curve of her throat as she sinks onto him, keening. “Through this heat, and the next one, and the next. Whatever you need – I’ll do all of it for you, Rey. I’ll do everything.”

It’s only when she is coming apart in his arms, shaking and gasping, that he realizes for the first time the true danger in taking an Omega. It’s not the constant distraction of her, of how often he thinks about the smell of her hair or the taste of her throat (her _throat)_. It’s not the vulnerability of opening himself so completely to another person, as flawed and unpredictable as himself.

No – it’s the realization that he would kill for this girl. That he would destroy entire galaxies for her. Rey blinks up at him, shy and sated, and he knows he would turn this whole wretched world into ash if she asked him to.

“Everything.” He presses the word against her lips. They curve into a smile, and Ben knows he will never be the same.

* * *

“You know I could easily pick this when you’re not around.”

Sitting at the kitchen table, Kylo doesn’t turn to look at her – but she can see how his shoulders tighten. “Don’t try my patience, little thief.”

“I’m just saying. Hypothetically.” Rey stoops next to the door, studying the knob. “We used to make a game of it. Ten seconds or less.”

“I can think of a better game. Similar rules. But much more entertaining.”

She bites her lip. “That’s not fair. You know my heat is coming.”

“Mmm. Yes.” This finally gets his attention. Kylo puts down his holopad and scrapes the chair backward, rising. “As if I could forget. I can hardly think straight, with your scent like that.”

“You know what would make it better?” Rey smiles sweetly and gestures at the door. “More blankets.”

His boots thud against the floor as he approaches her. “Or I could fuck you over the kitchen table.”

“Right,” Rey says, flushing. “You could do that too. But… you really need to save your strength, Alpha.” Running her hand down his bicep, she looks up at him through her lashes. “And I _really_ need some more blankets.”

Kylo frowns. She can feel the conflict rolling off of him: his desire to please her, warring with – with –

“What are you so afraid of finding in there, anyway?” she asks, unable to help herself.

His jaw clenches. “That door has been locked for ten years.”

“That doesn’t mean a whole lot to me.”

“Ah, yes. I forgot I was speaking with a criminal.”

Rey huffs with annoyance. “I wish you’d stop calling me that.”

“Which title would you prefer then?” Kylo steps closer, nearly pressing her into the door. “Traitor? Street thief? Scavenger?” His eyes flash. “Omega?”

She exhales shakily. “I’m a rebel soldier.”

“Of course you are.”

“Please, Kylo. You don’t need to go in there with me. But this will make it easier, while I wait for it to start.”

His frown deepens. “Fine.” Irritation darkens his scent as he strides across the kitchen, rummaging around in one of the drawers until he produces a silver key. “But we lock it again afterward.”

When they open the door, it’s as though they’ve stepped into a completely different place.

The rest of the house is spartan, compared to this room. The walls are covered with artwork, with family photographs and paintings. Rich tapestries unfurl across the floor in a variety of clashing patterns. As she steps inside, mouth open with surprise, Rey wonders if perhaps the whole house looked like this once. Cozy. Warm. She wonders if it was Kylo who changed that, after his parents died.

“The closet’s over there.”

He is hovering in the doorway, as though reluctant to step through. Kylo’s face is – pained. Distraught. Rey feels selfish, suddenly, for having unearthed these memories. The death of his parents is obviously a painful subject for him – no matter how well-deserved he seems to think it was.

Rey crosses the room quickly, determined to get what she needs and leave. But as she passes the dresser, something draws her attention.

 _No._ Her breath catches. That can’t be right. Frowning, she looks closer. And then she stops breathing altogether.

“I had… fairly large ears, as a child.” Kylo followed her into the room at some point, and now he’s standing directly behind her.

“Your ears are still big.” Rey’s fingers tremble as she reaches for the photograph, turning the frame in her hands.

“I got them from my father.” He points at the man in the corner of the picture, smiling over the shoulder of a young boy. Kylo Ren is beaming in the photo, no more than ten or eleven years old. Forever frozen in time with his crooked teeth and blinding smile.

But Rey’s eyes are drawn to the woman. “And that’s… your mother, I presume.”

“Yes.” Kylo’s voice is tense.

“Leia Organa.”

“Yes, that’s… How did you know that?”

 _”General_ Leia Organa.” Rey’s heart has climbed up into her throat. “Kylo… This woman is the only reason I’m still alive.”

“What are you talking about?” His eyes are snapping with panic. “My mother died ten years ago.”

“No.” Rey shakes her head adamantly, holding up the picture. “Your mother saved me from the streets. She’s leading the fight against Snoke. Kylo – your mother is the leader of the Resistance.”

He snatches the frame from her, snarling. “Is this your idea of a joke?”

“Why would I joke about something like that?”

“My mother is _dead,_ Rey. How many times do I have to tell you – I’ve had _enough_ – of your _fucking_ – _lies!”_

His voice has risen to a roar. It makes anger flare hot in her belly; her face twists up with outrage. “I’m telling you the _truth_ , Kylo. The general is very much alive – I would know her face anywhere. Why would I lie about that? What kind of person do you think I am?”

“The kind who associates with _rebel scum!”_ The photograph goes soaring across the room and shatters against the wall. “The kind who schemes and steals in order to get her way! The kind who would invent some kind of – sick fucking story to get me to join her band of traitors!”

“Is that what you really think of me?” Her voice shakes with rage.

“You’ve been telling me all along exactly what you are.” He stalks toward her, eyes wild, until he has her backed against the dresser. “Perhaps it’s time I started listening.”

From the kitchen, there is the sound of an incoming call on his holopad.

Kylo bares his teeth, indecision tight across his face, before he makes a furious noise and shoves away from her. Now that he’s not crowding her, she is finally able to breathe again.

What the _fuck_ has she gotten herself into?

She should have left the day the storm cleared up. How did so many _tomorrows_ turn into – how long has it even been now? A week? Longer? How could she have forgotten who this man really is?

_“Where the hell have you been?”_

The man on the other line sounds furious. Kylo starts to respond, but the caller keeps talking over him.

_”It doesn’t matter. You need to get your ass back here – there’s been an attack on Capital Hall, it’s fucking chaos – they’ve taken hostages –“_

Rey doesn’t wait to hear the rest. In the space of three seconds, she is back in the bedroom she’s shared with Kylo, scrambling under the bed for the blaster he keeps there. _Nothing._ Swearing, she leaps over the bed and shoves her hand under the mattress, digging underneath for the handle of –

– her switchblade. Sweet, sweet relief floods over her. Flipping it out of its case, she whirls around –

– and is halted by a large hand, nearly crushing her wrist in its grip.

“Drop the knife, Omega.”

Even if he hadn’t been using an Alpha command, Rey thinks her wrist might snap if he holds it like that any longer. She unfurls her fingers and watches her only hope tumble to the floor.

Kylo loosens his grip. But only slightly.

He looks… so different, from the man she’s gotten to know within these four walls. His face is dark with rage. Almost unrecognizable.

“Did you know about this?”

Rey’s mouth trembles. “Well, I –“

 _”Did you know about this?!”_ The words are shouted inches away from her face.

“It was something we were planning,” she says, willing her voice not to shake, “but I had – no idea, honestly, that it would be so soon –“

“Was this your plan all along?” Kylo looks deranged as he crowds her. “To keep me incapacitated here while your traitor friends take over my _fucking government?”_

“Have you gone completely insane?” Rey can’t keep herself from shouting back at him any longer. _“You’re_ the one who kidnapped _me!”_

“Some imprisonment it’s been.” Kylo yanks her roughly across the room – searing pain through her injured shoulder – and shoves her into that awful chair.

“You can’t possibly mean to leave me here.“

“I can do whatever the fuck I want. Or maybe you’ve forgotten.” He holds her still as she flails, until her hands are clasped firmly behind her back in the cold metal of the binders.

He steps back to admire his handiwork, and Rey spits at him.

“Fuck you, Kylo Ren,” she snarls. “I could have left ages ago. I could have killed you while you slept.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t give you another chance.”

Panic rises like acid in her throat as he pulls on his coat and fastens his blaster to his belt. He’s really doing it. _He’s leaving._ Before he can reach the door, Rey decides to make one last desperate attempt.

“Take me with you, Kylo. Please.” Her voice trembles with tears, but she is past the point of pride. “They’re my friends.”

Kylo pauses in the doorway, his back still to her. “And they’ll all be dead soon enough.”

When the front door slams behind him, there is no one left to hear her scream.

* * *

Rey doesn’t know how much time passes this way. She thrashes, she yells, she cries, she sleeps. Through it all, the glands on her throat itch and throb, her body teetering on the edge of her transformation.

The sky has turned pink and orange when there is the sound of a motor in the driveway, stirring her from her delirious haze of fury.

Rey sits up straighter in her chair. She’s already decided he won’t see her break down again. Of course, she won’t be able to stop him if he tries to touch her, but she doesn’t have to enjoy it. And she certainly won’t pretend to.

But when the front door swings open, it’s not Kylo’s voice that calls out to her.

“Rey?”

Rose sounds panicked. Terrified. There is another pair of footsteps, followed by a muffled curse. _Poe._

“Jesus Christ – what the fuck has he been _doing_ to her?”

Rey suddenly finds her voice. “I’m in here,” she calls out raggedly. She can hardly think for the relief that is flooding through her – they’re alive. They’re _safe._

They’re here.

Her two best friends burst into the room – Poe with his shirt pulled up over his face, eyes watering. Rose is immediately kneeling before her, inspecting her for injuries.

“Is everyone all right?” Rey says, face wet. “I heard there was an attack – did everyone survive?”

“It was a distraction.” Rose squeezes her knee. “So that we could come and get you out of here. Come on, Poe, get these things off her.”

Poe is pacing around the room, a ball of furious energy. He seems to be grateful for something to do, and at Rose’s direction pulls out his laser cutter.

“Hold still, Scavenger.” Heat radiates on the back of her arms as he carefully slices through the binders. “I swear to god, I’m going to murder this guy if I ever see him again.”

When Rey is finally free, she indulges Rose’s concern for just a few more moments as the smaller woman inspects her. Graciously, she doesn’t say anything about all the marks Kylo had left on her skin, the evidence of their lovemaking.

“I’m going to go wait with the speeders,” Poe mutters. He slams the front door shut behind him.

Her pouch is in the dresser. Kylo seems to have taken her switchblade with him – the thought makes her stomach turn – but the weight of her bag of tools on her hip fills her with forgotten confidence.

As she gathers her things, she can feel the weight of Rose’s gaze, the questions she won’t ask.

Rey tries to think of how she could possibly explain. If there is even an adequate explanation.

Instead, she asks, “How did you find me?”

Rose offers her a sad smile. “Once the General realized who had taken you, it all came together pretty quickly. He’s her son, after all. She said he used to love this place.”

From the closet, Rey chooses a coat. She tries not to pay notice how much it stinks like Alpha. _Her_ Alpha.

“Yeah,” she says softly. “I suppose he did.”

With one last glance at the empty house, Rey follows her friend through door and out into the snow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know, this is like an anti-Christmas present. But at least there was plenty of good stuff before the angst in this chapter?
> 
> Thanks you all for being the best readers in the world. Your feedback makes this so rewarding. At the risk of sounding like a total cheese, you guys make every day like Christmas for me 😋
> 
> I plan to get a lot of writing done this week since I'll be off from work. But if I don't see you until after, I hope everyone has a lovely holiday <3


	9. Chapter 9

He arrives at Capitol Hall to a cloud of smoke and blaster fire.

The attackers are already enacting their dramatic escape, setting off a series of explosions as they scatter. Ben roars as he charges into the building, firing wildly at any movement that catches his eye. His blood thrums hot in his veins. He longs to hurt, to _kill –_ to bring revenge on these fools who have driven him to abandon his Omega for even a few precious hours.

In the end, there are no prisoners. And only one rebel soldier is felled in the assault, compared to at least a dozen of his men.

Snoke is going to be furious. He was too late.

And Ben… All Ben can think of is his Omega. Alone. Restrained. Her voice cracking as she called after him.

As he left her.

He tells himself that his anger with her was justified. Rey had forced him to confront memories he had locked away behind that wooden door years ago. She had fabricated some horrific story about his dead mother, all for the sake of her delusional cause – a clumsy attempt to manipulate him into joining her suicide mission.

It couldn’t be true, of course. That wasn't even a possibility. Leia Organa has been dead and buried for a decade. Supreme Leader Snoke would not lie to him about such a thing. Ben was the one to deliver his own father to the First Order, after all – Snoke had no reason to distrust him with such information.

Or perhaps… it was something else. After all, Rey has never had a heat before. It’s a thought that has been plaguing him for a multitude of reasons since he locked her inside that cabin. Perhaps she briefly lost her grip on reality, lying about such things. Maybe she was simply desperate to find a reason to keep her Alpha with her forever.

This idea soothes his anger slightly. The approach of her heat has made her so needy, lately. So anxious. It makes sense that his girl would go to such ridiculous lengths to keep her Alpha by her side. His nostrils flare with pleasure as he recalls the desperation twisting her flushed little face as he fucked her into the rug last night. She had thanked him, over and over, for knowing exactly what she needed. For giving it to her so _generously._

Yes. It was only her heat. She would regret her foolishness once she was in her right mind again – though Ben could certainly punish her for it first. Oh, yes. Briefly, he is overwhelmed by the image of Rey draped naked across his lap, whining and wriggling – but he would make her be still. _Yes._ Her perfectly round bottom would start to glow red after just a few swats. How warm her skin would be as he smooths his palm across it. Radiating heat. And how hot she would be even lower, when he dips his fingers into the mess she’d made between her thighs.

Ben has a feeling they would both enjoy that very much.

He just needs to get back to her first.

Ben watches the aftermath of the attack with increasing impatience. The clean-up. The debriefing. The search for survivors. He pays attention only long enough to confirm that the deceased rebel is not the Alpha that Rey had been so weepy over at the storage complex. Ben intends to kill that one himself.

When it is clear that there are no rebels lurking in the rafters for him to hunt, Ben decides he has had enough. His mind is swimming with thoughts of Rey, all alone in their bedroom. Thighs damp with urgent need. Waiting for him.

He has just slipped out the front entrance of the smoking building and is striding across the lawn when General Hux bursts out after him.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Ben does not bother to slow his pace. “Not your concern.”

“The Supreme Leader is waiting to speak with you.”

He halts immediately, stomach plummeting. “Now?”

“Yes. He is very displeased.” Hux looks a little too happy about this. “Best not to keep him waiting much longer.”

* * *

The Supreme Leader is, indeed, _very_ displeased.

“I expected better from my apprentice.” The ghostly projection of Snoke’s form scowls down at him. In the darkness of the meeting room, his face seems even more ghastly, hovering large and transparent over the holopad.

“They were already escaping when I arrived. General Hux did not provide appropriate cover for all the exit points.”

In the corner, Hux glares murder at him – but Snoke does not take the bait.

“If you were in the Capital, you might have taken care of it yourself.” His drooping eyes narrow. “The General tells me you have been spending quite some time away from the Capital these days.”

Something about Snoke’s tone fills him with dread. “I live outside the Capital.”

“But you don’t live in the mountains.” Snoke’s expression is inscrutable as he examines him. “What could possibly be so important that the leader of my Knights has abandoned his army in its darkest hour?”

“I have not abandoned anyone,” Ben says through gritted teeth, even as his mind conjures the memory of Rey spitting at him, her eyes full of loathing. “I needed to take some time away to refresh my training.”

“And what part of your training requires an Omega?”

His entire body goes cold. _How could Snoke have known…?_ Without his permission, his eyes flick over to the corner, where General Hux is staring straight ahead with the smallest hint of a smirk.

Ben realizes that he must reek of her. Of his Omega, on the crux of her heat.

He wonders how long it would take him to cross the room and snap General Hux’s neck.

Ben forces himself to meet his master’s gaze. “There is no law against a Knight taking an Omega.”

“So you’ve _taken_ her, have you?”

“I… have yet to mate her.”

Snoke laughs openly – a cruel, mocking sound. “Always such a coward. Even in a matter as simple as this.”

“She is strong, Supreme Leader. Stronger than she knows. With training, she could be a valuable addition to our ranks.”

“She has made you _weak,”_ Snoke hisses. All traces of humor have vanished from his tone. “She has distracted you from your purpose. You were ashamed to even tell me of her. I encourage you to reflect on that, my apprentice. It will make it easier when you cast her aside.”

“I am not ashamed of her.” The familiar heat of his fury is starting to build deep in his chest. “And I will not cast her aside. She could be among our most powerful Knights. She is strong –”

“And you are not even strong enough to mate her. She has too much power over you, Kylo Ren. This is not the time for distractions.” Snoke shakes his head with disgust. “This little infatuation is over. You will deliver her to me, and I will be the one to determine if she is worthy of the Knights of Ren.”

 _No._ He can’t do that to her. He won’t. “Supreme Leader –”

“Do not give me any more reason to question your loyalty.” Snoke’s voice is low. Dangerously soft. “I will not tell you again.”

* * *

Icy wind whips against his face as he drives. The windows of the pickup are wide open, allowing the night air to flood in and clear his thoughts.

Everything is so clear to him now. He knows what he needs to do.

In the bed of the truck, the crates of supplies clatter as the truck goes over a particularly deep ridge. They are stolen, just like this pickup, from the same storage compound the rebels tried to rob that fateful night. Where Rey bested so many of his men and then surrendered herself to him, in spite of it all.

Thoughts of Rey make his stomach twist, and Ben’s knuckles turn white on the steering wheel. He does not have many regrets in his life. But an hour into his drive, he decided that leaving his Omega in such a state is certainly one of them.

The fire will have gone out by now. It will be dark in the cabin, with no one to turn on the lights. And his poor Rey, on the verge of her heat, without any way to find relief… He feels sick with just the thought of it. He can only hope she has fallen asleep. And perhaps that she will forgive him, when he shares his plan with her.

There is no chance in hell that he is bringing her to Snoke. The Supreme Leader has happened upon the one thing that Ben is unwilling to sacrifice. Somewhere between that dark room in Capitol Hall and this bumpy, snow-covered road, Ben has decided he will never let his precious girl leave his side again.

There is a world beyond the First Order, he knows. It is treason to speak of it, but Ben knows of its existence from whispered words in the training halls, from the night stories his mother used to tell him after she’d believed him to be sleeping. The journey is nearly impossible – there are the mountains, and beyond them the miles-long crater from the war, surrounded by toxic desert. But on the other side of the continent, free people live with their own laws. In their own communities.

Beyond Snoke’s reach.

Ben will bring her there. He will bring her to the ends of the earth, if that’s what it takes to be with her.

* * *

He is pulling up the long, familiar drive to the cabin, heart racing with anticipation, when he realizes that something is wrong.

The windows of the little house are all glowing with yellow light. Ben frowns, leaning over his steering wheel. How did she manage to turn them on? He is, of course, relieved that Rey has not been sitting in the dark all this time as he’d feared. Could she have gotten free of her binders somehow? Despite himself, Ben feels the corners of his lips tug into a smile. His clever girl. If anyone could have managed to do such a thing, it would be her.

But his smile vanishes when he notices the footprints.

They are almost covered by the falling snow, but their shape is unmistakable. Footprints. Larger than her feet – Ben _knows_ her feet, has memorized every inch of her – and leading toward the cabin.

Ben’s heart is suddenly lodged in his throat.

Had some passing Alpha caught a whiff of her on the breeze – an unmated Omega teetering on the edge of her heat? There are no other houses around here for miles around, but Ben knows as well as any other how far that scent can travel on a passing wind.

And Rey… Rey was here all alone. Bound.

Defenseless.

He was not here to protect her.

Ben does not even bother to turn off his truck. The driver’s door is left swinging open, gathering a fine dusting of snow, as he sprints toward the house. His blaster is in the passenger seat, but Ben doesn’t care – he is ready to kill whoever waits inside with his own bare hands.

The door slams open so loudly that it shakes in its hinges. Ben charges through the living room in a blur, crashes through the bedroom door –

And finds the room empty.

_Empty._

The chair is empty. The binders are empty. The bed is empty.

Rey is nowhere to be found.

 _”Rey!”_ he bellows, and flies back to the den. Empty. Still empty. All of it. Breathing heavily, he tears through the house, his wild gaze sweeping over each corner of every room – even that of his parents, where his dead mother smiles up at him from behind a spider web of cracked glass on the floor.

_Empty._

And then it hits him. Through the stench of his panic, the heady thrum of his adrenaline, Ben smells it.

It can’t be. There is a distant roaring in Ben’s ears, like the noise of the ocean swallowing him as he drowns.

The other Alpha was here. Her _friend._ The man who pressed into her that day at the march, murmuring something into her hair. The one who she leapt in front of at the warehouse, putting herself at the other end of Ben’s blaster barrel.

The man who she was trying to contact, the second day she was here.

There is a noise like a wounded beast, roaring in pain after it’s been pierced by a hunter’s arrow.

Distantly, Ben realizes that it’s coming from himself.

His Omega. His girl. His _Rey._ About to go into her heat. _His_ heat. Because it _is_ his – it belongs to him – just as she does. Just as he knows every inch of her soul. Every single part of her – Ben has it memorized, has charted out the map of her being and buried it deep inside his heart. _She is his._ How many times has she told him that? How many times has he promised her? _His –_ but she is not with him. At this very moment, she is with another Alpha. _Poe._ He remembers that name on Rey’s lips and sweeps everything off the kitchen table with one movement, glass shattering across the floor.

Ben can hardly recognize himself in his rage, but he does not care. Nothing matters right now, except that Rey is not here and his house – his house _reeks_ of another _fucking Alpha._

The images in his head are – they are _maddening._ He can’t breathe. He can picture it, far too clearly: his Rey – his _poor girl_ – all alone, trapped – by his _own fucking hand_ – when a strange man crashes through the door. Crazed by the smell of her. Ben should have been here. He should have protected her. Did she cry out his name? The thought is like a knife in his stomach, and Ben is moaning, staggering. What kind of Alpha is he – leaving her without any protection? Depriving her of her suppressants, and then trapping her defenseless and alone when she needs him most. When he _promised her –_

Nothing is safe from his wrath. The dishes. The lamps. The pile of soft blankets on the floor (her nest, she had been _nesting_ for him). He tears through it all, desperately, as though he will find Rey hiding in the middle of it. As though he will throw open a cabinet and find her blinking up at him, like a sleepy kitten that has curled up in a dark corner to rest – startled and amused by his fury.

He cannot bear to accept the alternative. The horrible, nauseating truth.

It’s only when he gets to the bedroom that he realizes. Ben stops short, breath coming fast in his lungs. His mind churns as it tries desperately to process this new understanding.

Everything is perfectly in its place.

Behind him, the den resembles the aftermath of a hurricane. But it hadn’t been that way when he came here. And the bedroom – the place where he left her, he _left her_ … Not a single thing has been touched.

The chair has not been overturned. Nothing has been swept off the dresser.

There was not a struggle.

The realization is like a punch to the gut. If he’s learned anything about Rey, it’s that she doesn’t do anything unless she wants to. And if she doesn’t want to... well, Ben knows very intimately how much fight she will give.

But as he lets his eyes pass around the bedroom again, dread tightening in his chest, it is very clear that no fight took place in this room – or in any other part of the house.

Ben leans against the wall, struck by a sudden wave of dizziness. He squeezes his eyes shut. _Hard._ The room is suddenly as hot as it would be if she were still here, radiating warmth and beaming up at him like the sun.

Rey was not kidnapped here. She wasn’t dragged kicking and screaming from her Alpha’s home.

She had gone willingly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finished this chapter and realized it's almost completely Ben Solo inner monologue. I guess this is what happens when I can't write smut – a whole chapter of Ben thinking about how much he wishes I were writing smut lol.
> 
> I hope everyone had a wonderful New Year celebration! We're officially in the year of Reylo <3 Thank you guys always for your endless support. It means more than I can express.
> 
> (follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/ohwise1ne) because that's where I hang out most of the time now!!)


	10. Chapter 10

It has only been ten days.

Rey learns this when they stop for a quick break – more for her benefit than the others, since her mouth is hot and dry and in desperate need of water. Rose mentions it casually, because why wouldn’t Rey know how long it’s been? Surely she’s been counting each unbearable minute that she’s been forced to spend with such a man as Kylo Ren.

Rey isn’t sure if she’s surprised that it was so long – or that it hasn’t been longer. Could someone really go from loathing a person to trusting them so completely in the space of ten days? Has it hardly been a week since she looked death straight in its smoking face, Kylo Ren’s fury hot and ripe in the air as he chased her through the forest?

And what of the intimacy they’ve shared in between? The awe in his face, whenever she surprises him (she always seems to be surprising him). The way his lips curl with satisfaction when she does something to earn her Alpha’s approval. For all the ways he seems to enjoy her pain, his touch has always been so tender afterward. As though she were something precious. Something worth cherishing.

Until he snapped, and his facade came crumbling down around him.

It’s strange, when they arrive back in the Capital. Rey has spent her entire life on these streets, but seeing them again is like stepping into the fog of an old dream. Nothing is actually different, of course. The fish markets still reek. The lamps that line the docks still flicker half-heartedly in the pale morning light. Bundles of blankets in the alleyways mark the sleeping places of the street people, phantom faces that follow the trio of rebel soldiers as they move silently past.

It occurs to Rey that perhaps _she_ is the ghost here. Without her noticing, her reality has been reconstructed, the time she’d spent with Kylo Ren rearranging her world so that its nucleus is no longer centered in the Capital – but in a snow-covered cabin in the woods.

When they arrive at the warehouse, Poe punching the code angrily in the keypad, it’s the first time in two years that Rey doesn’t feel like she’s coming home.

* * *

Rey is given her own space to sleep. They tell her it’ll be less distracting this way, because of her “condition.” This quickly becomes the preferred euphemism for the transformation that hovers over Rey’s head like a black cloud, heavy with dew and on the verge of splitting open.

They clear one of the storage closets to make room for her. It’s a small space, hardly large enough to walk around in, but it’s got walls and a door that locks.

A place to shut away the shameful Omega as she enters her heat.

 _Are you feeling_ hot, _little Omega?_

She is hot. Everything is hot. How long did Kylo say she had? A few days? Even less? Her stomach clenches with something like terror whenever she lets herself think about it too long. For when it comes, she will be alone. Hurting. She will be without Kylo – ( _you’ll feel as if you’re going mad) –_ without her Alpha _._ The thought makes her physically ill. How could she have let this happen? Why did she have to _leave –?_

But – but no. That’s not right. Kylo is the one that left. With her temperature near boiling, and the contents of her heart spilling out across the floor – her Alpha left her.

_He left._

Real cots are reserved for the sick, the injured or the very important. Rey is none of these things, but it seems old Maz has taken pity on her _condition_ and surrendered one for the next week or so. Rose helps her set it up, stretching the canvas across its hollow metal frame. It nearly takes up the length of the tiny room.

When it’s finished, they sit side by side on the edge. It’s a far cry from the bed she’s spent the past ten days in. And she certainly spent a _lot_ of time there.

Rose must mistake her sudden squirming for discomfort, because she reaches out and touches Rey’s hand.

“Did he… hurt you?”

There are too many ways to answer that question. But she knows the one that Rose is looking for. She closes her eyes.

“Not like that.” The warmth in her belly, growing fiercer each day, starts to burn even hotter. Rey had been a willing participant, after all. For all of it. Even the parts that had brought tears to her eyes. Even for the moments that he would wind her up so tight that Rey would be sobbing in his arms for relief.

But he’d hurt her in other ways, too. Ways she hadn’t expected. Wetness pricks at the corners of Rey’s eyes – _(he left you)_ – and she squeezes them back tight.  

In the end, he hadn’t needed to lay a finger on her to cut more deeply than any physical wound.

“I’m afraid I’ve been a bit of a fool, Rose.” The sound of her voice – so small, so weak – makes her sick to her stomach. Rey wipes furiously at her face. “It can make you feel a bit mad, this Omega stuff.”

“No one blames you,” Rose says gently. “You didn’t have your medication. Any Alpha would have had this kind of effect on you.”

 _No._ Rey shakes her head tightly. “That’s not true, though. He wasn’t just any Alpha. Even when I was on my suppressants, it was like –”

 _(she’s backed up against his bedroom wall –_ you don’t smell like it _– and when he blows so deliberately against her gland oh god her_ gland _Rey is sure that it’s the very best thing she has ever felt)_

“It was like we couldn’t stay away from each other.”

The worst part, of course, was that he had been _good_ to her. She can’t bring herself to admit such a thing, even to Rose. Sweet, understanding Rose, who is nodding with such sympathy at her side. He’d fed her and bathed her. He’d kept her warm. He’d been meticulous about her pleasure, had memorized the pathways of each nerve ending until he knew exactly which ones to stroke to make her body do and feel and _come_ exactly the way she needed.

He’d also opened up to her. Made himself vulnerable. He’d let her watch him fall apart over and over again – allowed her in those sprawling moments to feel more powerful than any other being in this universe.

Kylo Ren had taken care of her. He had _promised_ her. He’d been good to her.

Until he wasn’t.

“I need to speak with the General,” Rey says suddenly. She turns to her friend, tense with urgency. “I still can’t believe he’s her son. Rose – he thinks that she’s _dead.”_

To her immense disappointment, Rose shakes her head. “She left this morning. Said there was someone she needed to speak with. You know how cryptic she can be.”

“But I need to speak with _her,”_ Rey says, hating how the words breaks in a whine. She is full of hot, desperate emotion _(my needy Omega)_ and the way her voice wavers suddenly makes her think of

 _(groaning in her hair, he is oh_ god _he is splitting her in half over the table and Rey is panting, she is squirming but he licks her neck and tells her to be patient, his good, good girl, his lovely –)_

Rey buries her face in her hands. Struggles to get her breathing under control. “I didn’t even know she _had_ a son.”

“I don’t think anyone did.”

Rose is rubbing her back now. The skin feels too sensitive against her shirt. A little sore. Like she’s getting sick, maybe.

“Except…” Rose pauses for a moment. Considering. “Well, there might have been one other person.”

* * *

Maz’s workshop is a chaotic assortment of broken tech and stolen parts and tools of every variety. A high-ceilinged, cavernous space, it’s nearly always overflowing with the bolts and lasers and circuit boards that Maz weaves together to create something magical. Something deadly. In this crowded room, smoking blasters are reassembled and coaxed to life again. Speeders are repaired, drones constructed from scraps plucked in the junkyards.

Since Rey joined the rebel cause, the production of gear flowing out of this workshop has increased threefold. It’s something Maz likes to repeat whenever she sees her – along with a punch to the arm and a wink from one magnified eye.

Maz hates, however, to be interrupted in the middle of a project. Rey always dreads delivering her goods – even if Maz will be grateful for them later, she will rip apart any unfortunate soul who dares to disturb her while she’s puzzling out some issue or other.

But today, Maz does not let out a stream of colorful curses at the sound of the swinging doors. In fact, she glances up immediately, eyes especially wide behind her glasses as she takes in her visitor.

“I was starting to wonder if I’d lost my best scavenger.”

A wet laugh bubbles out of Rey’s chest. “Come on, Maz. You know it’ll take a lot more than this to kill me.”

The little woman continues to examine her as she slides off her stool. “I wasn’t speaking of death, child. I feared we might have lost you to something else.”

They sit together in the back of the room. Rey lets her fingers run over the shattered screen of a holopad, one of several stacked on the table before them.

"Has he marked you?"

It takes her a moment to understand what Maz is asking – but when she does, Rey’s face flushes bright pink. “No. Of course not. Why would you think…?”

Maz treats her to an incredulous look. “I could smell him on you from a mile away.”

Rey didn’t think it was possible for her blush to deepen any further. She realizes too late that her fingers have migrated to her throat, fluttering over the swollen pink skin there. _Has he marked you?_ Furiously, she wills her mind not to follow this tantalizing train of thought – clamping down on the image and pinning it fast before it can fully crystallize – but no _._ No, she can already see it. Dark, dark eyes, drinking in her face… rough fingertips dragging over the edges of ( _oh god oh_ god _oh_ ) – his breath hot and urgent as he lowers his head to –

_(here, right here, this is where I would sink my teeth, this is where I would take you, Rey, make you mine for the rest of my days if you would let me please let me oh)_

“He - certainly wanted to.”

 _(and it might hurt at first but my girl likes it when it hurts, doesn’t she, wants me to fill every part of her – so greedy – wants to come on my fingers just like this yes yes just like – oh so_ good _Rey you’re_ almost there –)

“But I didn’t let him.”

She’s back in the workshop now, instead of whining into a pillow that smells like pine needles and sex and _Alpha_.

“Well then.” Maz’s eyebrows have climbed high above the top of her glasses.  “You must have had quite a hold on him, little lady.”

An unsteady exhale. “You could say that.”

“I suppose he must have grown up after all,” Maz murmurs, almost to herself. “Ben was always an obstinate child, when I knew him. Wouldn’t let himself rest until he got what he wanted.”

 _Ben?_ Her mind stumbles over the name. Perhaps Maz had misspoken. “You mean… Ren? As in Kylo Ren?”

A scowl scrunches Maz’s tiny face. “Absolutely not. I refuse to call him by that ridiculous name. No, I meant _Ben.”_ When this is met only with further confusion, Maz’s mouth falls open. “Surely… he didn’t force you to address him that way when you were…?”

And then it hits her.

_Ben. His name must be Ben._

It’s like all the breath has been sucked out of her lungs. Rey sinks back in her seat, feeling dazed. “I…” Her voice is so small. _Ben._ But she had _known_ him. Hadn’t she? They had known each other so intimately, in every way. “I didn’t know.”

Maz pats her hand, heaving a sigh. “I’m sure there’s a lot you don’t know.”

 _Ben._ “I didn’t know he was Leia’s son either. And he…” Rey’s mind starts to race. “He didn’t know about Leia.” With sudden urgency, she leans toward the older woman, eyes bright and feverish as she remembers the purpose of this conversation. “Maz, he didn’t know his mother was still alive.”

The little woman’s mouth tightens in a thin line. “Not many people do. She didn’t leave anyone to tell the tale of her escape.”

“But… her son.” _Kylo,_ she thinks – and then, _Ben._ How could she abandon him? It was contrary to everything she knew about the General. “Surely – she would have told her son that she’d survived.”

“Sweet girl,” Maz tells her, shaking her head, “Ben Solo is the one who delivered his parents to their deaths.”

“No.” It’s becoming difficult to breathe. She remembers Kylo’s face, softening as it peered over her shoulder at a family frozen in another lifetime. Another world. “That can’t be.”

“I take it you didn’t do a lot of talking this past week,” Maz says dryly.

“But we did.” Rey shakes her head, trying to remember. Her mind has been so hazy these past few days. And it’s getting worse, sitting here in the workshop, learning that her Alpha isn’t the man she thought he was at all. “He said that the Supreme Leader – that _Snoke_ was the one who did it.”

Maz leans slowly toward her, until her large eyes are boring into Rey’s own. “Come now, child. How do you think Supreme Leader Snoke managed to find them?”

* * *

The corridor stretches endlessly before her, but Rey won’t stop running until she reaches its end.

Around her, the building hisses in protest – the groan of warping metal and crackling wood. Her breath, thick with smoke, burns as it passes through her lungs. The whole world is burning. From every side, the heat of red flames presses heavily against her body; rivulets of sweat run down her face, salty on her cracked lips.

The fire will take the building soon, but Rey won’t leave him here.

_“Kylo!”_

Her shout is hardly audible over the crash of an overhead beam. Rey leaps aside just in time – then pushes through the smoky inferno, pressing onward. Panting with the effort.

_He needs her._

She can smell his panic on the air, even through the stench of sulfur and burning skin. He is searching for her, _desperately_ – and when Rey finds him, she knows she won’t ever leave him again. It is agony, to know he is suffering. To feel the burn of it, crawling beneath her skin. She must find him, she must _soothe_ him, she must –

A door flies open, and Rey staggers through it, dripping sweat. She shouts his name again, but there is no answer – only the stink of fear.

“Kylo?”

A small boy, hardly eight years old, is huddled in the corner. His eyes are full of terror. Carefully, Rey approaches him. She opens her mouth to speak – and suddenly can’t remember his name.

Above their heads, the ceiling starts to crack. She hears someone shouting in the distance. Yelling for her.

“It’s time to go now,” Rey tells him, as gently as she can. “You need to come with me.”

The boy shakes his head frantically. “We’ll die out there.”

“We’ll die in here too.” She takes another step toward him. “Come on. We’ll do it together.”

Tentatively, he reaches out a hand. Like one she already knows, but smaller. Less steady. From far away, there is a great explosion.

“It’s time,” Rey says again.

But before she can grab him, the world is suddenly ripped away, scattering like ash and smoke. The last thing she sees as her fingers grasp at nothing, curling through black dust, is the terror in Ben Solo’s eyes, consuming her.

With a shuddering gasp, Rey is thrown back into the waking world.

Her first thought, with a surge of panic, is that the fire had been _real._ But no – she wipes her damp brow, eyes darting around the dark room – there are no flames here. The heat is coming from within her, burning her skin from the inside out.

Her second thought is that Kylo must have gone for more firewood in the middle of the night. He’s not here, after all. Her fingers grasp at the thin air beside her, seeking his touch – _it’s so hot_ , she mumbles, _we don’t need more fire_ – but he is gone.

_Gone._

With a terrible jolt, Rey remembers where she is.

The floor is cool against her bare feet, but it brings no relief to her flushed skin. Her blanket lies in a crumpled pile beside the cot, discarded much earlier in the night. She tries to calm her racing heart. _It was only a dream,_ she repeats to herself – but it’d been so _real._

From outside the storage room, there is a tremendous crash.

Rey leaps to her feet with a sudden burst of adrenaline. Not all of it had been a dream, then. There are voices, shouting beyond her door – followed by the unmistakable noise of blaster fire.

Before Rey can process what she’s doing, she flying across the room. It’s hard to find her way around in the dark, hands stretched blindly before her, but her fingers quickly locate the solid grip of the gun Rose had left on the table.

 _Yes._ Its weight is familiar in her hand. Soothing. Rey takes a deep breath and pads toward the door.

She is halted by the sound of another crash – then a furious roar, splitting the air and breathtaking in its rage.

But Rey’s breath leaves her for a very different reason.

In the space of a second, the fine hairs at the nape of her neck stand straight up. She can feel them, every single one of them, as a ripple cascades from the top of her spine to her toes – a full-body shiver that leaves her aching and restless and _ready._

 _Alpha._ Rey breathes in deeply – as if she needed to confirm it. As if there were any room for doubt inside this body that is suddenly vibrating, spilling over with the enormity of her need.

_He is here._

Knuckles white around her blaster, Rey crashes through the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL GUYS, I took off the chapter count... because for every chapter in my outline I end up filling the space with two or three. I hope no one feels too betrayed. This will probably end up in the 15-18 range, but I feel a bit silly upping the count every single update. I think I'll let myself get on the other side of a particular event that will be full of scenes which always take up wayyyy more of my time than planned.... 😬And then I should have a better idea of a final number.
> 
> Thank you guys for your incredible support with this story. You've been carrying me through some rough times lately, and I appreciate every single one of you.


	11. Chapter 11

It is chaos.

People are running in every direction. A new boy, nineteen or twenty years old, catches a whiff of her as he passes, but Rey bares her teeth until he moves along. She follows the commotion down the corridor, clutching her blaster close to her chest as she goes.

Down the hall, there’s another crash – followed by more shouting.

_ ”Where the fuck is she?!” _

It’s Kylo. His voice – his _rage_ – is unmistakable. A number of emotions pass through her in rapid succession before they are all eclipsed by a surge of panic. If Kylo Ren has found their base… Rey breaks into a run. If he’s found them, that means the First Order has found them too. 

They are all in very great danger.

Rey skids around a corner, nearly barreling into Rose and a young man she recognizes from the supply room. He is leaning heavily against Rose; with a wave of guilt, Rey notices that the shoulder of his jacket is dark with blood.

“Oh, Rey, thank god,” Rose says in a rush. The man moans, slumping further against her. 

Rey grips her blaster and tries to look braver than she feels. “Where is he?”

“In the mess room. He’s holed himself up with Poe. Refuses to speak to anyone until he – wait a second – _ Rey! _ Where are the hell do you think you’re –“

There is no time. Without looking back, she rushes onward.  _ He’s got Poe. _ The walls are closing in around her, pulse loud and thunderous in her eardrums. She needs to get to him,  _ fast, _ before Kylo rips him apart in some kind of Alpha-crazed rage.

Black streaks and craters mark the walls of the corridor, evidence of the firefight that took place here. They are smoking slightly at the edges. Recently formed. Rey rounds a corner, face hot with adrenaline, and finds a small group of fellow soldiers gathered outside the doors to the rec room.

“That’s her,” someone says, to stunned silence.

_ ”Rey!” _

Finn nearly launches himself at her in greeting, lifting her off the floor as he pulls her into a tight hug. And then drops her, like he’s been scalded. 

“Holy shit. Rey… Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Rey says, a little too quickly. “Never been better. We can catch up later. What the hell is going on?”

With a firm grip, Finn takes her elbow and guides her away from the others. “You don’t need to worry, Peanut. We won’t let him take you again.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He’s looking for you, obviously.” Finn’s eyes dart nervously to the mess room entrance before he leans in close and whispers, “You know.  _ Kylo Ren.” _

She huffs out a bitter laugh. “What gave you that idea?”

“You should go back to your room. Before he figures out you’re here.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she hisses, yanking her arms from his grip. Hurt flashes across Finn’s face, and she tries to soften her tone. “I know how to handle him, Finn. Better than any of you. How long have they been in there?”

“Not long. We were keeping him back, but one of the propane tanks exploded in the kitchen. There was a lot of confusion, and... well, he grabbed Poe.” Finn’s jaw twitches, anger flashing across his face. “Asshole threatened to shoot us if we didn’t leave. But we’re coming up with a plan, Rey. And you  _ really _ don’t need to get involved.”

Rey tries and fails not to raise her voice. “I’m already involved. And I told you, I know how to deal with him.”

“Have you gone insane?” Finn grasps her shoulders, looking her straight in the eye. “No way. Absolutely not. Come on, Peanut, you’re not yourself right now. I think you might be – coming down with something. You look a bit –“

“I’m going into heat,” she corrects him, a little too loudly. Several of the soldiers turn to gape openly at her. “But that doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. I’m not asking for your permission, Finn. I need to speak with him.”

“Rey,” he begins, his tone pleading, but she shrugs off his hands.

“i know what I'm doing, Finn. Trust me. Please.” 

The mess room is nearly unrecognizable. A quick scan of the space does not reveal any other casualties – Rey breathes a sigh of relief – but from the level of destruction here, it is a miracle that no one was gravely injured. A faint odor of gas permeates the room, a large black hole in place of the wall that previously separated the kitchen. Tables have been hurled across the floor, chairs splintered and charred with blaster fire. A pot of stew is upended, meat chunks and cabbage dripping like entrails down the wall.

His back is to her. Across the room, he has Poe Dameron pinned against the wall, a blaster shoved underneath his chin. Blood is streaming down Poe’s forehead, a bruise purpling the skin around his left eye. He struggles in Kylo’s grip, but that only makes him press the barrel deeper into the flesh of Poe’s jaw.

“I should kill you,” Kylo is telling him in a soft, dangerous tone. “You and the rest of your band of thieves. You think you can come into my home – take my  _ fucking _ Omega –“

“How many times do I have to tell you, asshole? She’s  _ not your Omega.” _

Kylo thrusts the barrel of the gun against his temple,  _ hard. _ Poe grunts with pain. “Say that again and I’ll split your head open, right here on this wall.”

“What the fuck kind of Alpha leaves his Omega handcuffed to a chair right before her heat?”

“If you bring me to her,” Kylo hisses, “maybe you can ask her yourself.”

“How many times do I have to tell you?  _ She’s not here.” _

“I’m going to give you one last chance.” Poe bares his teeth, hissing with pain, as his head is forced sideways by Kylo’s gun. “Give me Rey. And we’ll forget this ever happened.”

Despite the blaster at his temple, Poe manages to bark out a laugh. And then he spits at him.

The scent of Kylo’s rage skyrockets in the air. Growling, he brings back the gun, as if to strike it across Poe’s face –

“Stop!” 

Kylo’s head snaps around. Everything freezes as his eyes lock with hers. He looks naked, in that moment – shocked and vulnerable and  _ hungry.  _ His nostrils flare, eyes darkening as they take her in, raking down her body. She knows how she must look – disheveled and feverish.  _ It’s all for you, Alpha, _ that small voice whispers in the back of her mind.  _ Look what you’ve done to me. _

When his gaze reaches her face again, she is startled by how much regret she finds there.

“Rey.” His voice is hoarse. Chest heaving. “Rey, please…”

“Put the gun down, Alpha.” Somehow, Rey manages to sound commanding. It comes as a shock when she feels so helpless to the gravity in his eyes – to the ancient desire that begs her to fall to her knees and present herself to this terrible man that has ruined her so completely.

“I don’t think so.” Kylo looks like he’s struggling to breathe normally. “We need to leave, Rey. Right now. We’re in great danger here, and you’re in no condition to defend yourself. Look at you. You’re…”  _ Beautiful, _ he does not say. But she smells it in his scent, so desperate and yearning for her.  _ You are stunning like this. You are all mine. _

Rey’s toes curl on the floor, attempting to force her body toward him, but she resists, holding herself tight. “You’re insane if you think I’m going anywhere with you.” 

The look on his face – it’s physically painful for her to see him this way. Especially right now. But she holds her gaze steady, watching his heart break in front of her. “I never should have left you, Rey. I promised you… I promised I’d take care of you, and then I –“

“You don’t deserve to take care of me,” she cuts him off, and Kylo flinches. “Now put the gun down.”

Rey can smell the conflict in him. The rising panic, that his girl would deny him like this. Jaw working visibly, Kylo glances back at Poe – who is still staring at her, dumbstruck, at the other end of the blaster. “Only if he leaves first.”

“No way,” Poe blurts out. “Rey, don’t be an idiot – get out of here,  _ please,  _ you don’t need to subject yourself to this –”

She does not break eye contact with Kylo. A silent understanding passes between them. “Fine.” Rey jerks her head toward the door, pulse racing. “It’s all right, Poe. Give us a few minutes.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

_ “Poe.” _ She does look at him then, a stern glance that dries up the words in his throat. “I need you to leave.”

Slowly, Kylo takes a step backward. Releases him from his grip. Poe looks back and forth between them before letting out an angry swear. “Christ, Rey. I hope you know what you’re doing.” With one last murderous glance at Kylo, he begins to sidestep along the wall, staring down the other end of Kylo’s blaster until he reaches the door.

“If you lay a fucking  _ finger _ on her, so help me god, there won’t be anything left of you when I’m finished.”

A growl rips from Kylo’s chest, and Rey throws her friend a furious look. 

“Poe,” she hisses. “Get out.  _ Now.” _

And then they are alone.

Kylo lets out a long breath. His eyes dart between Rey and the door, as though awaiting an ambush. When none arrives, his gaze settles upon her body and he finally allows himself to  _ look _ at her.

The air shifts as he drinks her in. Flushed. Damp with sweat. Trembling slightly as she holds the blaster fast. His jaw works for a moment and Rey realizes that, for once, he has nothing to say.

“The gun, Alpha,” she tells him. “Put it down.”

His eyes flash. “Rey, I can't protect you if -”

“Don't make me ask again.”

Nostrils flaring, Kylo seems to consider arguing – then slowly lowers it to the floor. When he rises again, his eyes are very dark. “Does that make you feel better, little one? Like you're the one in control?”

“Don’t call me that,” she snaps. The hurt that flickers across his face is like a knife in her chest, but Rey keeps her grip steady. “You’re mad if you think you'll ever be  _ in control  _ of me again.”

“Rey,” he says brokenly, and her pathetic heart stutters at the sound of her name that way, like a desperate prayer on his lips. “I’m here to bring you somewhere safe. The First Order has discovered this place.”

“Of course they have,” she hisses.  _ “You're _ here, aren't you?”

That succeeds in making him angry. A small rush of triumph fissures through her at the way his jaw twitches. “You’re not listening.” He is clearly losing his patience - but Rey couldn’t care less about his patience right now. “You won’t be safe here. I need to protect you.”

“I don’t give a shit what you think you’re doing,” she says. “You need to get the hell out of here.  _ Now.” _

This seems to take him by surprise. For a moment, he almost looks offended – and then his eyes flash with something dark. Possessive. It makes something shift in the air between them, and Rey suddenly feels very small.

“Did you truly think that I wouldn’t come for you, Omega?” 

To her immediate distress, Kylo begins to advance. 

“Don’t come any closer,” she tells him, but her shaking voice gives her away. Nearly stumbling over her feet, she makes a hasty backward retreat in an attempt to keep some distance. “I mean it. Stay where you are.” Her knuckles are starting to hurt, she is gripping the pistol so hard. 

Kylo, of course, doesn’t listen. “Do you think there is anywhere you could go that I wouldn’t find you?” Dark energy sparks around him like a thick cloud as he draws closer. For the millionth time, Rey finds herself wondering how it’s possible to be both terrified and helplessly aroused.

“I’m not fucking around, Kylo,” she says, and somehow manages to sound like she means it. “Take another step, and I swear to god I’ll shoot.”

To her surprise – and immense relief – her threat seems to work. He makes a pained noise, but he still freezes in place, gritting his teeth. 

When it’s clear that he’s stopped moving, Rey tries to calm her racing pulse, to stamp down the completely irrational urge to close the rest of the space between them. Kylo seems to be fighting a similar battle. His fingers twitch at his sides with the effort of standing still. She can smell how badly he wants to touch her – wonders how quickly he would strip her clothes off if she weren’t pointing this gun at him. The thought makes something contract in her stomach, almost like a cramp. Rey bites back a pained whimper. 

“I understand that you’re – displeased with me,” he begins. “But it’s not safe for you to remain here.”

Rey doesn’t bother to suppress her snort. “Because I’m safer with you?”

“I cannot protect you if you abandon me at the first opportunity,” Kylo says, voice rising.

“Have you lost your mind?” Rey gapes at him with furious disbelief. “You abandoned me first!”

“Well, I shouldn’t have.” His voice is full of loathing, and she realizes with a jolt it is directed toward himself. “It was a mistake, leaving you. I made a mistake. When I returned and found you – missing, I thought...” He sounds so different from the raging Knight of a few minutes ago. “Please, Rey. I can’t stand to be apart from you. My mind has been consumed with thoughts of – it’s been  _ torture _ , imagining you – alone... going into your  _ heat –” _

“I wouldn’t be alone,” Rey interrupts. She is lying, of course – she’d rather go through a thousand lonely heats than spend one with an Alpha other than her own. But it has its intended effect. Kylo’s face twists with agony – and then, quite suddenly, rage.

Before he can take more than two steps toward her, Rey pulls the trigger, firing off a shot that skims right over his shoulder. He freezes, looking behind him at the smoking hole in the wall. 

“Did I say you could move?” she asks sweetly.

Kylo actually  _ snarls _ at her then, teeth bared and eyes snapping with rage. And because Rey has gone completely insane  _ (it must be the heat it has to be)  _ she feels heat pool between her thighs in response.  _ Your Alpha is so desperate for you _ , whispers that delirious voice.  _ Look at him. _ With a flare of panic, she wonders if he might continue charging forward anyway. She would be utterly helpless to deny him, after all – and she’s sure he knows it. He knows everything about her. He’s had her begging and squirming more than enough times to know what she smells like what she wants something – and  _ god, _ is she wanting right now. 

Swaying slightly, Rey finds herself slipping into the image like quicksand, pulling her body under fast. Her fingers would be useless as he plucks the blaster from her grip – big hand slipping under her waistband so that he could discover how  _ wet _ she is right now, just for him – just how close  _ (so close) _ to her heat she is – to losing it  _ completely _ when he –

“Rey.” His voice is dangerously low. A warning. It snaps her out of her hazy fantasy, and Rey groans as another cramp tears through her abdomen. 

“I can’t do this,” she mumbles suddenly, almost to herself. Everything is hot, and she is so dizzy. So tired. She flips the toggle on her gun. “I’m sorry, Ben.”

There is hardly time for his eyes to widen with shock before the stunner hits him, square in the chest. 

* * *

In the back of the warehouse, Maz has constructed a fortified room to hold anything that needs holding. To Rey’s knowledge, it’s only been used twice. The first time was for an unfortunate rebel who, after taking a feral dart in the thigh during a particularly vicious battle, slowly lost his mind to a rabid fury before his body followed suit shortly afterward.

The second time is for Kylo Ren.

His face is grainy on the black and white screen, but she can still sense the rage radiating from the tight line of his shoulders. His wrists are clamped firmly to the arms of the chair.

Beside her, Rose lets out a frustrated sigh. “He’s still not talking.”

“He’ll talk,” Finn says, glaring at the screen. “Poe can break anyone.”

Rey wipes a hand across her forehead, clammy and hot beneath her fingers. That may be true for anyone else, but she knows from personal experience that Kylo Ren won’t be so easily swayed.

Suddenly, Poe storms out of the room, slamming the door shut behind him. On the screen, Kylo stares fixedly ahead. Betraying no emotion.

“He won’t say a fucking word. Just that reinforcements are on the way.” She has never seen Poe like this, furiously pacing around the room. The bruise around his eye has turned a dark and ugly purple, and Rey feels guilt twist in her stomach.  _ This is your fault,  _ she thinks.  _ All of it, your fault. _

“It’s a bluff,” Rose says decisively. “If he had told anyone else, he’d have brought the others with him.”

“But what if they  _ are _ on the way?” Finn hasn’t taken his eyes off the screen. “Do you think we should start evacuating to the safe houses?” 

Poe kicks the desk, and everyone jumps. “That’s exactly what he wants. To draw us out into the open. He wouldn’t be anyone’s prisoner if there’s no one here to watch him.”

“He’s trying to manipulate us,” Rose says again. “It wouldn’t make any sense for him to come here by himself if he could have brought others to help him. It’d be too risky.”

“How do we know for certain if he doesn’t fucking  _ talk?” _

“Give it time,” Finn says. “He’ll get hungry eventually.”

This suggestion makes Rey feel sick to her stomach. She remembers the smell of hot oats, sweet in the air – dark eyes following the spoon as it slid between her lips.  _ Would that be any way to treat a guest? _ Rey had been completely at his mercy then – and still, he had chosen kindness. He’d had no reason to, but he’d taken care of her, even then.

“I’ll talk to him.”

Her three friends, still bickering, fall into stunned silence as they turn to her.

“Rey,” Finn says slowly. “We talked about this.”

“I don’t care.” Rey strides forward, trying to look as confident as a person can with rosy cheeks and a climbing fever. “He’ll only talk to me. So I’ll be the one to do it.”

“Fuck that.” Poe places himself squarely in front of the door, his whole body tense. “We’re not going to give this bastard what he wants. Do you even hear yourself? You’re not equipped to be interrogating anyone right now. Least of all  _ him.” _

The anger that flares through her doesn’t feel like her own. Rey steps right up to him, tilting her chin defiantly. “I saved your life before,” she says, seething. “I don’t need you to decide what I’m equipped or not to do,  _ Alpha.” _

“Enough.” Rose grabs hold of Poe, pulling him aside. “Fighting isn’t going to do us any good right now. And she has a point.” She glances uncertainly at Rey, mouth thinning. “She managed to do what a dozen of us couldn’t before.”

Relief, unexpected and sweet, surges through her. Rey gives her friend a grateful look. “I won’t disappoint you. I promise.”

“I still don’t fucking like this,” Poe says through clenched teeth.

“That’s too bad.” Rey walks up to the door, trying to steady her breathing as another wave of heat washes over her. The metal knob is deliciously cool against her fingers. She starts to turn it, and then pauses. “You should probably know... I’m going to disable the camera.”

Poe swears. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I do this my way,” Rey snarls, “or no way at all.” She’s not sure where this sudden aggression has come from, but she suspects it has to do with the man sitting in the adjoining room. 

“All right.” Rose doesn’t sound happy, but she nods. “You’ve got thirty minutes. If you’re not out by then, I’m coming to get you.”

Rey reminds herself to do something kind for her later. Cook her a nice meal, maybe, with all the knowledge she picked up from Kylo at their cabin. “Thank you.”

“Be careful,” Finn tells her, voice strained. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

Rey exhales unsteadily. After all, that’s not what she needs to worry about. They have no idea – none of them – of all the things she wants to do  right now.

As soon as Rey closes the door behind her, an eerie silence blankets her eardrums. The noises from the rest of the base are swallowed up by the fortified walls. There is only the rush of blood in her eardrums, her racing pulse – and the sharp intake of breath across the room.

“Hello, Ben.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUYS HELP I can't stop writing this story. Pinky promise that I'll get back to my other WIPs soon – just... I can't get my head out of this one right now. 
> 
> Thank you everyone for all your love and enthusiasm <3


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge thank you to my amazing beta squad – [KTF](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyloTrashForever), [ladyburrito](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyburrito/pseuds/ladyburrito) and [stories_in_my_head](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stories_in_my_head/pseuds/stories_in_my_head) – for the constant reassurance that this monster of a chapter makes sense.

On Ben's nineteenth birthday, Snoke deposited him into the heart of the Deadlands with nothing but a blaster, a knife and an aluminum canteen.

He remembers that month as a terror-fueled blur of flight and pursuit. He spent his nights half-sleeping in the husks of charred trees, his days hunting beasts with black teeth – along with the occasional recruit who assumed Kylo Ren would make an easier meal than the other inhabitants of the burnt forest.

Thirty days later, he shed his old name like peeling skin and emerged from the ashes of that place a true Knight.

Since then, Ben has faced trials far greater than the Deadlands. He has known the hollow gnaw of hunger, his stomach empty for five long nights after rations dried up during the siege. His face has been battered bloody until he could hardly see through his swollen eyes, held hostage by a band of smugglers seeking information about the Supreme Leader. When Ben escaped four days later, he carried his captors' severed heads in tow to show his master he had not been betrayed.

All this is to say nothing of the horrors inflicted upon him by Snoke himself.

Ben has known torture. _Real_ torture. So if Poe Dameron thinks all this childish posturing will break him, he is even stupider than he looks.

The fool seems to think he is intimidating, leaning across the table and shouting in his face. In Ben’s opinion, the scenarios Dameron invents to frighten him are lazy and uninteresting. He is not a skilled interrogator. It is clear that Dameron has yet to discover the power that can blossom in the weight of silence. Left to its own devices, the imagination can conjure up terrors more paralyzing than even the most creative of persecutors.

After all, no one knows a man’s worst fears more intimately than himself.

Dameron’s incessant ranting actually does the opposite of its intended effect. It provides a suitable distraction from the reality that Ben's worst fear did, in fact, unfold today – and he was helpless to stop any of it.

Staring pointedly over Dameron's shoulder, Ben wonders when his worst fear morphed from black eyes, following him silently through emaciated trees, into Rey’s sweet face turning cold as she rejected him.

Perhaps she is watching right now. Slowly, Ben lets his gaze travel to the camera in the corner of the room. He imagines she’s looking back at him, and it sends a little thrill down his spine. For all her attempts to shut him out earlier, it’s impossible for her to hide the way her body reacts to him.

And _oh,_ had she reacted.

Ben fixes his stare on the lens in the corner. Unblinking. Rey will come for him, of course. She must. Brutally, he beats back a flicker of fear that she won’t – or at least, not in time. There isn’t enough time for any of this – but Ben forces himself to breathe deeply, trying to calm the helpless rage that threatens to swallow him whole at any moment.

Rey will come to him sooner if he remains calm. There will be plenty of time for his rage later.

It helps that he finds himself exceptionally forgiving today. Just the knowledge that she is here, in the very same building – it fills him with tremendous relief after the agony of so many long hours spent wondering if he’d lost her forever.

His Omega is here. _In need_ of him. It is only a matter of time before she presents herself.

Ben just hopes it won’t be too late.

Dameron is still pacing and shouting, but Ben’s mind is back in the mess hall with his girl. Even with her body aflame, she’d been so fierce. He’s heard that Omegas become weaker with their heat – pathetic, dependent little creatures. Not Rey. His girl is too strong for such things. Stunning, even in her anger. It did things to him to see her snarling at Poe Dameron, ordering him around.

She’d been wrong to disobey him, of course – but Ben will allow her that for now. Her emotions are running high. Just as they’d while she was spinning her desperate tale about Leia Organa. She isn’t thinking clearly, his poor girl. So close to her heat. So _needy…_ Her mind must be churning with it.

Ben knows exactly what she needs to make it better.

Dameron slams his hands down on the table, directly in front of Ben’s face. To his credit, it makes him jolt. “Are you sure this is how you want to play? Because I’ve got all day.”

Ben gives him a long, flat stare in response.

“Fine.” Throwing up his hands, Dameron storms over to the door. Though Ben’s face remains stony, he privately revels in the victory of getting under this infuriating man’s skin. “But if you’re really so concerned with protecting Rey, it would help if you gave us a little information.”

He slams the door behind him.

Ben lets out a long breath. It aggravates him, that Dameron might actually have a point. Ben had not been sleeping when the alert came in – he’s been in a state of restless, delirious rage ever since he discovered she escaped – so when the message lit up his phone just after three, it only took him a few minutes to arrive at the coordinates of the next attack.

At the time, he thought it would be a simple thing, to snatch Rey away. He’d have at least a few hours before the other Knights moved forward with the plan – especially in the absence of their leader. More than enough time to track the scent of his Omega and steal her away.

Now, though, he’s uncertain of how long he’s been here. An hour, or perhaps two – it’s difficult to tell when he’s spent a portion of it unconscious. The silence of the room suddenly feels louder than before, so heavy within the fortified walls. What if the Order has already arrived? Panic starts to claw up his chest. There would be no way for him to know, after all. While Ben has been sitting here, practicing his ridiculous breathing techniques, white-helmeted soldiers could be storming through the base, leaving destruction in their wake.

His chest tightens with rising fear. Rey could be in danger. She could be _captured._ And he would have no way of knowing.

Ben is debating whether he should drop his rapidly deteriorating facade and start shouting at the camera when the door swings open again.

It’s not Dameron.

His first thought is that it’s definitely been longer than two hours. Because Rey – she is closer than she was before. _Much_ closer. He inhales with sharp surprise - a mistake, because he is suddenly shuddering with a lungful of summer rain and cinnamon and desire. _His Omega._

How ready she is. Her body calls to him across the room, a hook sinking beneath his belly button and yanking _hard_ \- and Ben can only sit there. Breathing. He soaks in the sight of his girl, the remnants of old anger still thrumming in her veins, and feels the arousal wash over him in a slow, dizzying wave.

 _Fuck this._ He opens his mouth to command her over here - _now_ \- but she speaks first.

"Hello, Ben."

His mind goes completely blank. He blinks at her, speechless. It’s been a decade since anyone has called him by that name. Though… perhaps that’s not right. Hazily, a memory rises before him –

 _(Rey’s hands are shaking, the yawning darkness of the barrel flares bright with electricity,_ I’m sorry Ben I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m)

But that was a dream. A fantasy, plucked from his unconscious mind in the aftermath of the stunner.

Wasn’t it?

“What did you call me?”

Rey doesn’t even seem to hear. She crosses to the corner – the resulting shift in the air makes his eyes nearly roll back in his head – reaches up to the camera, and dismounts it from the wall.

“I asked you a question, Omega.”

A shudder ripples visibly down her body at his tone. It makes his stomach hot with satisfaction. But his triumph vanishes quickly when she doesn’t glance back at him to answer. “I called you by your name.”

“My name is Kylo Ren.”

“So you’ve said.”

“Then who told you otherwise?”

“I’m the one asking the questions, Alpha.” Rey seems to be satisfied with whatever she’s doing to the camera – disabling it, from the way its guts are hanging out the side – because she sets it down on the table with a _thump._ Ben can feel his patience rapidly deteriorating.

“We don’t have time for this,” he says, his voice low with warning. “The First Order is coming, and you…” He breathes deeply, his shoulders rolling instinctively with the pleasure that washes over him. “You are _very close,_ little Omega.”

“We have as much time as I say we do.” She turns around, eyes bright and fiery. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m the one calling the shots today.”

“Release me, and we’ll see how long you can keep that up.”

“I don’t think so.” Rey is glaring at him again. Defiant. He doesn’t like it. “We’ve got a few things to talk about first, I think.” There is only one other chair in the room. She drags it across the floor to the door, wedging it beneath the knob.

Ben wets his lips. “A lot of precautions, just for us to talk.”

“I plan to do more than talk.” She gives the chair a hard kick, driving its back firmly beneath the knob. “Though it really depends on how you answer my questions.”

“What makes you think I’ll answer them?”

Rey leans back against the wall, studying him. Her cheeks are radiant with warmth, pink and delightful. Ben is struck with the odd desire to pepper them with kisses. “Because if you don’t, I might just leave you like this. All by yourself, for the First Order to find you.” She narrows her eyes. “The way you left me.”

His heart twists in his chest. “I was coming back for you.”

“Or maybe I’ll work you up first.” Rey looks him up and down, considering. “How sad it would be, if you were all alone here. No way to relieve yourself. Aching for your Omega.”

 _Your Omega._ Ben exhales in a slow shudder. Because she is _his,_ even after all they’ve been through.

She knows it just as well as he does.

“Is that what you’re thinking of? Relief?” He watches her, eyes dark. “You don’t need to lie to me, Rey. I know how badly you need it right now.”

“Not badly enough to throw away my only bargaining chip.”

“A strange way to negotiate,” Ben says, tilting his head. “You’d be the one denying yourself pleasure, if I refused to cooperate.”

“Oh, I still plan to take my pleasure, Alpha.” She smiles, a mischievous curve of her lips. “I would just deny you the privilege of giving it to me.”

The little minx. Ben doubts her ability to resist the ancient pull between them for too much longer. He knows exactly what he would find, were he to slip his hand between her legs right now. He can smell it. His girl is already so _wet_ for him. So welcoming and warm for her Alpha’s knot. The thought makes his stomach clench with anticipation.

But she’s still a few hours away from true desperation. By that point, he will have already whisked her away someplace safe – somewhere with a bed, preferably, with all the blankets she could ever desire. By that point, she will already be mindless with gratitude, tears streaming down her cheeks, thanking her Alpha between broken gasps – _please Kylo yes thank you thank you oh_ – for all the pleasure he permits her.

His nostrils flare. A few hours, at least.

Ben plans to have her at least twice before then.

“Come here,” he says, “and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

Rey folds her arms. “I think I’m good over here, actually.” Her lips curl at his spike of irritation. “But maybe if you’re good, I’ll come a little closer.”

 _If he’s good…?_ Oh, Ben is going to enjoy making her regret this later. “I think you’ll end up closer to me much sooner than that, sweetheart.”

It’s adorable, the way she still blushes for him. Like she can smell his intentions on the air. To his disappointment, however, she remains across the room.

“You keep saying the First Order is on its way,” she says, voice deliberately even. “Why should I believe you?”

So she really does wish to talk. Ben decides to adopt a tone of indifference, since sincerity and threats were both so ineffective earlier. “You don’t need to,” he says carefully. “It’s unlikely that your little friends will survive the attack. They’ll take you alive, of course, since you belong to me.”

There it is – the delicious blend of annoyance and arousal that thickens the air whenever he articulates this strange thing between them. He can practically taste the words on the tip of her tongue – _I don’t belong to you_ – but for once, he doesn’t need to pin her down and lick between her legs until she stops denying it. In fact, she doesn’t even give voice to the protest this time, teeth sinking into her rosy lip instead. _Interesting._ That possessive, ancient thing within him _purrs_ with satisfaction.

“Why didn’t you come with them, then?” Genuine curiosity furrows Rey’s little brow, and she frowns at him. “It doesn’t make any sense to show up here on your own.”

“They would have been…” His jaw twitches. “Less than kind, with you.”

“Because you’ve been such a gentleman.”

“You don’t like it when I’m gentle.”

This causes color to rise once more on her cheeks – followed by an unexpected burst of anger. “Since when do you care what I like? Was I even going to get a say in any of this?”

“I assumed…” Ben falters, suddenly uncertain. “I thought you would prefer to be with me. For your heat.”

“The heat that I’m going into because you _kidnapped_ me? Are you forgetting the part where I ran away?”

It’s like a punch to the gut. “You… Rey, you weren’t thinking clearly.”

“No.” Rey runs a hand across her face. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? I’m never thinking clearly when you’re around.”

The panic is starting to return. He can feel the situation slipping rapidly out of his control – but there is nothing he can do, helpless and restrained and too far away from his girl. He longs to go to her – to cross the room and scoop her into his arms. He wants to tell her that she doesn’t need to think clearly. She doesn’t need to do anything at all but let him take care of her.

“You could have left.” His voice is rough with emotion. “You had – so many opportunities, after the storm passed. And instead, you chose…”

She had been willing, hadn’t she? He feels numb, to even consider… His eyes squeeze shut, banishing the thought. Ben’s never been much good at making people happy, but Rey’s happiness has come before everything else. He’s made sure of it.

“I thought you chose to stay,” he finishes softly.

“Until I didn’t.” Rey’s face is tight with anger. “That’s the point, Kylo. It’s a _choice._ When you left that day, I felt like I didn’t have a choice anymore.”

“You didn’t give me a choice either,” Ben snarls. “If you didn’t wish to be punished, perhaps you shouldn’t have lied.”

“You’ve got some fucking nerve.” For a moment, he thinks she might march over and snarl in his face – his fingers twitch at the prospect of having her closer – but she remains across the room, a ball of furious energy. “If you’re still talking about your mother, it turns out that I’m not the one who was lying.”

“Leia Organa is _dead!”_

“She’s not dead,” Rey hisses. “But if she were, it would only be because you were trying to _kill_ her.”

Ben needs to close his eyes for a moment. He won’t allow himself to start shouting at her – not while he’s in such a vulnerable position. “My mother was an enemy of the First Order.”

“So you gave her up for dead?” Her voice is shaking, and he realizes with a shock of horror that she is crying. “Is that how you treat your enemies? Is that how –” She inhales, a small wet sound. “Is that how you would treat _me?”_

 _“No.”_ The bolted chair creaks as he strains against his bindings, his heart twisting with desire to hold her. “No, Rey, of course not –“

“I don’t know if I believe you.”

He struggles to control his breathing. This is not how this was supposed to go – Ben watching helplessly as Rey wipes tears from her face, right in front of him and somehow _too far away_ for him to comfort her. It is agony. The worst kind of torture.

“Please, Rey,” he says, his voice breaking. “There will be time to explain later. All of it. But we need to get out of here first.”

It pains him, the effort she’s making to compose herself. She’s been through so much lately. Separated from her Alpha… and now going into heat for the first time in her life. Ben’s fingers grasp restlessly at the arms of the chair. She doesn’t need to stay composed in front of him. He wants to tell her to let go. He wants to kiss her until the tears stop, until she is pliant and soft in his arms.

When Rey speaks again, her voice is so small. “If the First Order is really coming… why _did_ you come here on your own?”

Ben feels his lips tremble, his heart squeeze. "You must understand,” he tells her softly, "I would do anything – _anything,_ Rey – to keep you safe."

This is the right thing to say. It speaks to the Omega inside her - the wanting, wild creature that always lifts its head when he's near. It's awake now. Chipping away at the prison she has built to contain the ache of its hunger. He can _feel_ it, simmering below the surface of her heat-flushed skin. Reaching for her Alpha.

He thinks he'll go mad, if he doesn't have her soon.

"Does it hurt?" he asks.

Rey exhales slowly. "Yes."

“We don’t need to do this right now, little one.” His tone is gentle. Deliberately soft. As though he is coaxing a fawn that could dart away at any moment. “Why don’t you come over here? Let me touch you for a little while?”

Rey's breathing is becoming a lot less steady. “We’re not finished talking.”

“We’re not,” he agrees. “But you’re not going to be able to talk for much longer if we don’t do something about how _hot_ you’re getting inside, are we?”

“I’m not hot,” she whines. Tugs at her collar. Ben’s mouth waters.

“I can smell it, you know. Your slick. I can smell it from here. Are your thighs already so sticky for me?"

Rey shakes her head tightly, squeezing her eyes shut. "Not for you."

"Oh, it's absolutely for me.” Ben pitches his voice low with intent. “Make no mistake. I did this to you, Rey. The heat. The wetness between your legs. Every little bit of it belongs to me."

"Only if I give it to you." She is trying to sound firm, he can tell, but her voice is breathless. _Affected._ When she rolls her neck, there is the briefest flash of swollen, shiny skin beneath her left ear. It's enough to make Ben growl, fingers gripping the arms of the chair as his mind slowly descends into that dark, possessive place Rey has carved out inside of him.

"You can pretend this means nothing," he breathes. "That I mean nothing. But you won't have the strength to maintain this little act for much longer. Do you really want your friends to see you that way? Whining for me to break you open with my knot?"

“Maybe I don’t need your knot,” she says, rounding on him. “Maybe I’ve found another Alpha to see me through it already.”

The chair _groans_ as Ben throws himself against the restraints. “Say that again.”

“Another Alpha.” Something has shifted in her demeanor. Rey takes a step toward him, eyes flashing. “Unless you can give me a good reason why it should be you.”

“You’re playing a dangerous game, Rey.”

“I thought you liked games,” she says smartly.

“You won’t like this one.” His voice is very quiet, the way it sounds when he’s threatening a sobbing prisoner just before their execution. But today, his neck is the one on the chopping block – and Rey is the headsman looming over him, axe held high above her shoulders. Just like that day in the forest.

“I’m liking it very much, actually.” She is approaching him now, her scent growing more potent with each step. Ben is torn between pressing his body as far back into the chair as he can in desperate defense of his sanity – and the urge to breathe so deeply that she fills every pore of his body.

The latter impulse wins out.

“So let’s play, Alpha.” Rey pushes herself onto the table, perching on its edge. There is a scant two feet of space between them now. Ben licks his lips, struggles to control his breathing. “Convince me.”

“Get me out of these binders, Omega, and I’ll convince you until you can’t think straight.”

“Nice try.” Her bare foot, peeking out from the hem of her loose sleeping pants, touches his knee and pushes it to one side. Ben’s fingers twitch convulsively with the urge to grab her delicate little ankle. “Use your words, Kylo.”

Is that how she wants to play? Something dark and wicked curls up his spine. Rey loves to hear him talk – loves the way his voice vibrates through her body, dripping with promise and sex. She loves when he talks to her beforehand, when he describes in lurid detail what he plans to do to her – and during, too, when he’s crooning filthy admonishments in her ear.

They never talk much after, of course. _After,_ when his emotions are so wide and sprawling that it’s impossible to reduce them to syllables and vowels. _After_ , when she’s nuzzling his jaw, her body soft with sated pleasure – in those precious _after_ moments, any attempt to squeeze the enormity of his feelings into the vulgar limitations of language... it would only be offensive. Degrading, even.

But right now, if Rey wants him to talk – oh, Ben will _gladly_ give her that.

“Let’s imagine what it would be like, then, with another Alpha."

Displeasure flickers across Rey’s face before she smooths it back over, carefully composed. “Go on.”

“A stranger. One of your little friends here, perhaps… but still a stranger. He won’t know you like I do.” Ben allows himself a smirk. “He’ll have scented you, of course. You smell – delicious. Ripe. I want to sink my teeth into you. Lap you up until my chin is dripping.”

Rey’s breath hitches. Ben doesn’t allow her to look away.

“This other Alpha – all he knows is that you are going into heat. He doesn’t know all the ways you like to be worked up, before he touches you. How much you need to be teased. You may beg and twist and cry – but only I know how your scent shifts when you are _truly_ desperate. That you need to be made desperate at all.”

She licks her lips. Her scent is shifting even now, as if to prove his point – to drive home how utterly she belongs to him. “Would you like to make me desperate, Alpha?”

“I think we’re getting there.”

Rey’s little foot slides along his leg again, making him grit his teeth. “Try harder.”

“I won’t need to try, in a few more hours.” Ben’s head spins a little at the thought. “Your heat will make you desperate all on its own.”

“But I’m not in heat yet.” Her eyes tell a different story – blown wide with lust, framed by a soft flush across her cheekbones. Still, she remains disconcertingly lucid as she leans toward him, mouth quirking in a smirk. “Maybe I want to make you desperate instead.”

Rey dips forward until her nose is brushing lightly against his. Ben’s arms shake with the strain of his muscles, urging him to lean into her. “You can’t hide from me, sweetheart,” he breathes, and the words ghost across her lips, so close to his mouth. “I know exactly what you need right now.”

The air trembles between them for a moment, the taste of her breath on his tongue like sweet wine – before she pulls back with a smile. “Maybe you don’t know me so well after all.”

Ben can’t help the groan that leaves him, a noise of pure frustration. “Please, Rey,” he says tightly. “Enough games. Let me touch you.”

“What did I say before?” Another secretive smile. “If you’re good, hmm?”

Ben breathes out heavily through his nostrils as her hand comes up to hover over his face. He turns his head to kiss it, but she pulls it away, clicking her tongue.

“Do you think you can stay _still_ for me, Alpha?”

Oh, yes, she _will_ regret this later. Ben will make sure of it. “Do I look like I’m going anywhere?” But he manages to keep his face from leaning instinctively toward her when she leans forward again, her hair whispering along his jaw.

“I knew you could listen,” she murmurs, and licks his scent gland.

The pleasure nearly blinds him. Ben’s mouth falls open, sucking in a sharp breath, and he can only sit there, paralyzed with the sensation of her hot little tongue sliding against his skin.

“I know what you smell like too,” she breathes against his throat. “How much it pleases you, when I let you take me apart. You think you’re so clever, talking about other Alphas. As if you’d let anyone else have me. You’ve been thinking about fucking me from the moment I found you today.”

Rey nibbles at the edge of his gland, and Ben _shudders_ with the effort of maintaining his composure. “You’ve been thinking about it too,” he tells her hoarsely. “You’re thinking about it right now. How much I would fill you up, with my knot locked inside of you.”

“I don’t know if you can, Alpha,” she says breathlessly. “I’m so _empty_.”

“Of course I will. You’re so little, after all... I wonder sometimes if I’m too much for you. But it never is. My greedy, perfect girl.”

It’s like a drug, the liquid pleasure that rolls off her body as he croons into her ear. Ben is high off of it. It makes him forget himself, so that when he tries to turn his head, to meet her mouth and _kiss_ her already – the moment is shattered, and she pulls just out of reach.

“Later,” Rey says, with a mischievous curl of her lips. “I want you to touch me a little first.”

Ben struggles to keep his breathing steady. Yes. Touching – that’s something he can do very well. And in the process, perhaps he can incapacitate her enough so that she’ll free him from the rest of these restraints and they can _leave._

But when her fingers trail down his arm, raising goosebumps beneath the fabric of his shirt, they go straight past the bindings that grip his forearms. They halt instead at his glove, tugging at each fingertip until the leather glides smoothly off his hand.

“I thought you liked it when I touch you with my gloves.”

“I do,” Rey says, with a secretive smile. He is utterly unprepared for her to raise it to her cheek and nuzzle against it, cat-like. “I like it very much.”

His pulse begins to race as she turns her face, kissing its empty fingers. Lips moving slowly along the thick leather. It’s obscene. Ben cannot look away.

“Smells like you,” she murmurs, color rising across her cheekbones. Her tongue is bright pink against the black fabric, gently drawing the tip of the index finger into her mouth. The room starts to spin a little.

“You’re doing it wrong,” Ben tells her with quiet urgency. “You like to choke on it, sweetheart. To feel my fingers in the back of your throat. Put that back on my hand and I’ll show you.”

From her perch on the table, Rey only stares into his eyes, dark and daring, as she lets him watch her little tongue flick back and forth over the leather. Ben wants to kiss her so badly he is dizzy with it. Desperately, he decides to try another approach.

“You must be feeling hot underneath all those clothes,” he says hoarsely. “I usually have you naked a lot sooner than this.”

“Mmmm.” Rey slides the glove from her cherry lips with a small _pop._ “I think you’re right.”

Ben is not sure why he thought this was a good idea, when she slides off the table and pulls off her shirt. Standing just inches away from his knees, her body radiates heat and sex as she reveals it to him. He yearns to put his hands to her flesh, to feel how warm she’s burning for him. He did this to her –  _he_ did _–_ and she is denying him the opportunity to savor all his hard work. _It’s not fair._

A rosy flush has already spread down her chest, fanning across her sweet little tits. It usually takes several minutes of a rough fucking for her to get this way, this full-body blush that means she’s on the verge of breaking open for him. Ben finds himself suddenly consumed with envy. He is envious of her heat, for working her up like this without his permission – and even more envious of his glove, which she is now using to graze across her pebbled nipples.

The growl that erupts in his chest – Ben can feel it in his bones. He wants to pin her down and taste the sweat that’s beading at her collarbone. He wants to bite and tease and lick her perfect breasts until she’s mewling for him.

“Do you see how hot you’ve made me, Alpha?” Rey’s voice is barely above a whisper. “I started getting like this after you left. We could still be back there right now, you know. Just the two of us. Do you think you’d be inside me right now?”

“Rey.” His breath is coming faster. “The things I want to do to you right now... You have no idea.”

She smacks the leather lightly across her nipple, and he feels himself _throb_ with arousal. “I know you better than you think, Ben Solo.”

He hardly even notices the use of _that_ name as she slips her hand beneath the waistband of her pants. The material is loose around her hips, leaving plenty of room for her to reach between her thighs and – _“Oh,”_ she whispers, eyelashes fluttering. Ben can’t breathe. He can’t look away from the slight movements of her hand, disturbing the fabric. So much gentler than Ben would be with her, if he had her right now.

“I’m so _wet,_ Alpha.” She pulls the glove from her pants and presents it to him. When he notices the moisture catching in the light, black leather glistening with her slick, Ben thinks he might actually die. He needs to close his eyes for a moment, shuddering with the heady smell of her as it fills his lungs. “Would you like a closer look?”

The sound of his breathing is very loud in his ears as Rey slides out of the rest of her clothes. And then she is naked, and Ben can’t remember how to breathe at all.

She is _so_ wet. It drips down her thighs, shiny and translucent. It makes heat rush through him from head to toe, to see the evidence of her body’s preparation for him. Ben decides then and there that he _loves_ her heat. That it is a miracle of nature, this thing that softens her until she is plump and ripe for the taking.

Rey seems to be thinking the same thing. “It’s for you, you know,” she says, hardly above a whisper, as her fingers dip between her legs. “So that you can keep fucking me straight through. For as long as I need you to. You’d slip in so _easy_ , like this.”

“Get on my lap,” Ben says hoarsely, “and we can find out.”

“I don’t know.” She smiles at him –  _disobedient_ – and then hitches herself onto the edge of the table again, her foot resting on his knee. Ben makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat when she spreads her legs for him. “I think you can see just fine from there.”

She’s right. Ben can see everything. Her fingers part the lips of her shiny cunt, and he is treated to the breathtaking sight of her, swollen and pink and clenching around nothing.

“Rey,” he says brokenly, and he has no shame left for the desperation in his voice. “Sweetheart, please, let me touch you –”

“But this is almost like you’re touching me, isn’t it?” She lifts his damn glove again, and the sound of her breath hitching is so loud in his ears when the leather brushes across her labia.

“No,” Ben rasps, “it’s not.”

“It is for me.” Rey doesn’t take her eyes off his face as she slowly drags a leather finger along her slit, bottom to top. She bites her lip. “Feels just the same.”

When the glove reaches the red nub of her clit, Rey sucks in a sharp breath. Or maybe it’s Ben – he can’t tell, because the scent of her arousal is pulsing through his veins like the sweetest poison, scrambling his thoughts until all he see is his Omega’s perfect little body, waiting to be filled by him.

“It’s not the same,” he growls. “If those were my fingers, I’d have three of them inside you already.”

Rey makes a small, needy noise that goes straight to his head. When she slips her hand into his glove, his entire body tenses. She doesn’t fill it the way he does, but she’s wet enough that it only takes a push for one finger to slip inside her.

“Almost the same,” she breathes, and then starts to move.

Ben has never been more aroused in his life. Nor has he ever known such frustration. He’s not sure if he wants to bend her over the table and smack her with the leather until she’s sobbing for relief, her ass glowing with fine red stripes – or if he wants to lift her from the table and deposit her directly onto his aching cock. Or perhaps he wants to tie her up again. Torture her the way she’s torturing him now. Though he’s not sure he could ever be so cruel as she’s being, stroking herself into a frenzy while he looks on, trapped in his own personal hell.

Rey’s working two fingers inside herself now. She can’t withdraw them all the way, the extra leather at the tips making things messy, but she seems to like the way it feels, stuffing herself as far as she can go. Her breath is coming in little gasps now, flush deepening from pink to red. But her face scrunches up with frustration when she can’t get the angle right. Ben tries not to writhe against the chair in sympathy.

“You’re not doing it right.” His voice is strained. Raw. “Three fingers, I said.”

“It’s not _enough_ ,” she whines. He can _smell_ the change happening in her – the loss of control as her heat begins to truly blossom in her body. “It’s not enough, Alpha – it _burns_ , everything’s so _hot,_ and I need –”

“I know what you need,” he breathes, watching her avidly. _Yes._ “My fingers are so much _bigger_ than yours, sweetheart. Let me take away the burn for a little while.”

Rey shakes her head frantically, panting. Her foot has slid up his knee, toes curling and uncurling against his thigh. Ben longs to suck them into his mouth. He wants to devour every inch of her.

“You know what would be even better?” Ben’s heart trembles in his chest. “A nice, rough fuck. That’s what you _really_ want, isn’t it?”

Rey mewls.

“I know that’s what you’re thinking about. Trying to remember what it was like, to be stuffed so full that there’s nowhere left for me to go. But remembering isn’t the same as the real thing.”

She cries out with frustration, and then suddenly his lap is full of her –  _yes_ – and she is tossing the glove to the floor, panting against his neck, rubbing herself desperately against his clothed erection. Ben can hardly think, his senses reeling with the sensation of her hot little body pressed against him –  _everywhere_ – but he forces himself to keep it together. Ben will satisfy her, even if this is the only way she’ll let him.

“It hurts,” Rey whimpers again, right next to his ear, and he has no idea how he hasn’t ripped this bolted chair straight out of the floor.

“I know, little one,” he breathes, trembling with relief that his mouth is finally _finally_ on her skin. “I know, but you’re getting close now, aren’t you?”

_“Yes.”_

Her fingers shake as they reach between them for his zipper. It takes every last ounce of self-control for him to deny her.

“There’s no time, sweetheart.”

She blinks up at him with wet eyes, heartbroken. “But – don’t you want –”

“Of course I want to,” he says, a little too roughly. “What I wouldn’t give to fuck you right now. To have you spread out beside the fireplace. The way I need to have you right now – unless you’d like to spend the next week in this room, Rey, we need to get out of here very quickly.”

He noses against her scent gland, blood running hot in his veins at how _shiny_ it is.

“But first, we’re going to make you come.”

Rey chokes out a little sob as her hand stills obediently on his trousers – both a blessing and the worst kind of torture. Ben tries to distract himself with her lovely throat, teeth running over her pulse.

“Three fingers,” he murmurs. “Do you think you can do that?”

The noises that come from between her legs when she follows his instructions – Ben thinks they will be ingrained in his memory of the rest of his life.

“So _obedient,”_ he breathes against her throat. “We’ve decided we want to be good again, have we?”

“Yes, Alpha, _please –_ ”

“Do you even remember how? You’ve been so defiant today. I’m not sure if you do.”

“I want to be good,” she gasps, “a good Omega, _please,_ I want to be good for you –”

“You’re being good right now. Fuck yourself deep for me, sweetheart. Just like that.”

Rey _mewls. “Alpha –”_

“Never forget this,” he says roughly, as she grinds and gasps and buries her burning face in his neck. “No one else knows you like this, Rey – your voice, the way it changes when you’re – _yes,_ so close to breaking – and your toes curling, just so, right when you’re about to – fuck Rey, it’s all right here, in this pretty little gland – just like that, I’ve got you –”

She gasps his name, stilling. The world splits and shudders around them as she falls apart.

This time, when Rey is holding him after – in those precious moments that seem to ebb and swirl around them, where there is nothing but the taste of her lips in his mouth – this time, Ben finally finds the words to say.

“You make me want things that I’ve never wanted before,” he whispers into her hair. “Things I never thought were possible... I want to do it all with you. My fierce, lovely girl. You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen and I – I will be worthy of you, Rey. I swear I will. I swear it.”

* * *

Extracting herself from his lap is the most difficult thing Rey has had to do since… Well, since she left him the first time.

The ache in her belly has abated, somewhat. It’ll start back up again soon, she knows. It’s been coming in waves – the surge growing more powerful with every pass, knocking her down even harder than before. But she has bought herself a little piece of sanity before the hot coals catch fire in her belly once more. Before her mouth is watering again at the thought of her Alpha's knot.

Except that particular thought – it definitely still makes her mouth water. Especially when she’s just had her fingers inches away from it a few moments before. Rey swallows thickly and tries not to think about knots, or heats, or the weight of Kylo’s eyes on her as she rises to her feet.

He is silent as he watches her, teetering on fresh legs like a newborn foal. When Rey reaches out to touch his hair, Kylo’s eyes squeeze shut, his face achingly tender after the frenzied encounter they’d just shared.

“We can’t stay here, Omega.”

“I know.” He glances up at her with surprise, as though he’d been expecting an argument. “We need to evacuate. Just wait here. I’ll make them understand.”

Kylo’s jaw twitches with irritation. “There is no time –”

Rey leans down and kisses him. When she pulls away a moment later, his eyes, always so dark and intense, are a little glazed over.

“Please, Rey.” Her name is achingly soft on his lips. “Don’t go. I can’t lose you again.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she says quietly. “Do you trust me?”

Kylo exhales slowly through his nostrils, his jaw working. “I do.”

“Then give me a minute with them, Kylo. Just a minute. I’ll be right back. I swear.”

Rey’s clothes feel rough against her skin as she pulls them back on. She knows how she must look – reeking of slick, hair wild and damp – but she doesn’t care. Kylo’s eyes follow her every movement, and she can feel his discomfort thickening in the air as she covers herself.

When she pulls the chair out from beneath the doorknob, the acrid scent of his discomfort surges into full-blown agitation. “I won’t lose you again.” His voice breaks on the words.

Rey’s eyes find his over her shoulder, a silent promise. “I know.”

She is prepared for her friends to accost her as soon as she opens the door. She’s prepared for their shock – maybe even their betrayal, when they see the state that she’s in.

She’s not prepared for the room to be empty.

As the door swings open, the deafening silence from the fortified walls gives way to distant shouting and rapid-fire shots. Rey stands in the open doorway, bare-footed and feverish, and realizes all at once what is happening.

“I thought you said we had _time!”_ She whirls around, ablaze with sudden anger.

“I said no such thing,” Kylo snaps. “In fact, I’ve been urging you –”

“You didn’t say they were coming _now!”_

“Let me out of these bindings, Omega.”

“Was this part of the plan? To keep me out of the fighting while your army slaughters my friends?”

“The plan,” Kylo hisses, “was to save you.”

There is an explosive crash, followed by screams. Rey runs her hands over her face –  _too hot_ – and then strides into the adjoining room. Kylo yells after her, enraged, but Rey ignores him; he is cut off abruptly as the door slams shut.

Poe has the keys to the  bolted chair. But Poe is not here. Rey begins to pace, thinking furiously. There has to be another set, right?

There has to be. She cannot accept the alternative.

Rey’s search of the room is frantic. She is messy in her panic, emptying drawers and containers all over the floor. Nothing. The noise of blaster fire is drawing closer. She can clearly distinguish the shouts of the troopers now, the tell-tale distortion of their masks making their voices strange and alien.

And then she sees it. A small box in the corner of the desk, glinting metal inside.

When Rey opens the door again, Kylo Ren’s fury crashes into her like a wall. He has somehow managed to tear the chair legs from their bolts on the floor, tipping it over in the process and spilling him onto one side. This is how Rey finds him - wrists still bound to the arms of the chair, raging loudly and thrashing as he attempts to right himself.

Rey is at his side in an instant, and he stills, panting loudly.

“Rey.” His eyes, wild and black, find her face. He stares at her like she’s a ghost, face damp with sweat. “If you ever – do that to me again –”

“Later.” She kneels behind the chair, heart pumping with adrenaline. “I need to get you out of this.”

“Keys?” he asks her, still breathing hard.

“No.” Rey untangles the paper clip. “But this is just as good.”

Kylo ogles at her over his shoulder as she gets to work on the locking mechanism in the back of the chair. “You’re going to – with _that?_ But – no, Rey. No. This is madness. You need to go. _Now._ Before they find you. If Supreme Leader Snoke – if he gets his hands on you –”

There is a hissing sound, and the binders on the chair click open. Rey can taste his shock in the air – and then he is scrambling to his knees, pulling her to him –  _Alpha_ – and kissing her, _hard_. His hands move across her hair, her back, her face – as though he doesn’t know where to touch her. As though he can’t stop touching her.

Kylo pulls away, breathing hard, and cups her jaw in trembling fingers. His eyes bore heavily into her own. “I love you,” he tells her.

Rey kisses his mouth. “I know.”

Kylo pulls her to her feet. Their height difference is striking, now that he’s no longer strapped to the chair. “We need to leave.”

“There are no blasters,” Rey says, following him across the room. “No weapons. They took us by surprise. I looked, but the others didn’t leave anything behind.”

As he leads her out the door, Kylo treats her to a dark smile. “Don't worry, little one. I don’t need a blaster.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was... a lot longer than I meant for this chapter to get. There were so many feelings in this update and I still don't feel like I navigated them all before Rey's heat got to her. I hope everyone's necks aren't too sore from all the whiplash. Thank you for your patience this week while I sorted through all their nonsense <3


	13. Chapter 13

The first group of troopers is picking through a stack of crates in the hall. There are four of them in total, with brand new, First Order issue pistols that glimmer with fresh polish under the wan yellow lights. Derisive laughter rings across the ceiling as they scatter the boxes of rations across the floor.

Rey’s blood starts to boil for reasons that have nothing to do with her heat. She’ll give them something to laugh about. Without thinking, she starts to move around the corner –

And is yanked backward, crushing fingers wrapped around her wrist. A moment later, she is shoved against the concrete wall, Kylo Ren looming furiously over her.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“They’re ruining perfectly good food,” Rey hisses,  but she’s cut off when he covers her mouth with his massive hand. Warm and firm, it nearly spans the width of her entire jaw. Rey struggles, attempting to speak, but Kylo only presses her harder against cold concrete. 

“Be  _ still.” _

It makes her a little weak in the knees, how much he towers over her. Rey tries to remember to glare as he bends slightly to speak in her ear, voice low.

“You’re going to stay right here. Do you understand?”

Rey licks his warm palm, the skin salty beneath her tongue. Kylo yanks his hand away as if burned. “Do that again and I’ll bite you,” she whispers furiously.

“You’re trying my patience, Omega.”

“And you’re trying mine. Don’t tell me what to do.”

He huffs out a hot, angry breath. Around the corner, the troopers are starting to lose interest in the rations. 

“I am going to keep you safe,” Kylo tells her. “But you must have faith in me. And you must  _ stay put.” _

Something about his tone sends fire licking through her abdomen, followed by a sharp cramp. She winces - then grabs a fistful of his shirt and yanks him down so that she can reach his mouth, soft with surprise against her lips.

Rey loves the way he looks a bit stunned, after she pulls away. She promises herself to make him look like that more often. “I’ll be good,” she murmurs.

Kylo swallows visibly. For a moment, Rey thinks he’s going to kiss her again – before the crackle of a radio around the corner announces the approach of the soldiers. He presses a finger to her lips (she has to resist the urge to lick it again) before taking a step away.

The change that sweeps over him is instantaneous. Kylo rolls his broad shoulders, straightening to his full height; when he opens his eyes again, he is almost unrecognizable. 

Rey has not encountered this incarnation of Kylo Ren since that night at the supply center, when he strode calmly through smoke and sulfur to collect his Omega. He has somehow faded in Rey’s memory, giving way to the brush of his lips, the musky scent of his hair – all the complexities of the Alpha who has tended to her needs so completely these past ten days. Even the wild, desperate man that tore through the base earlier today in pursuit of her – he has vanished, eclipsed by the deadly confidence possessed only by the most elite of the First Order’s warriors. 

As Kylo Ren glances down at her, face void of any emotion, Rey realizes why the Knights don’t wear helmets. The emptiness in his eyes can inspire terror more effectively than even the blank abyss of a trooper mask.

When Kylo strides around the corner, away from her, Rey can almost smell the moment they recognize him – the abject horror that fills the air as they realize who he is.

“Master Ren!”

There is a shuffling noise, and then silence. Rey imagines the soldiers standing in stiff salute, like beaten dogs cowering at the approach of their master. The image makes acid rise in her throat.

“There’s nothing else this way.” Kylo’s voice sounds so cold and unfamiliar, addressing his soldiers. “Turn around.”

“But sir,” one of the troopers says, stumbling over his words, “we were instructed to cover every room in the east wing.”

“You have new instructions now. I’ve already swept all the rooms along this corridor.”

“But General Hux wants us to –”

“Do I look like I give two shits what General Hux wants?” 

Rey can’t see him, but she is fairly certain that he doesn’t.

“With all due respect, sir… were you at the briefing?” This is a new voice. Higher-pitched, and suspicious.

“That’s none of your concern.”

“Respectfully, sir, you might want to alert General Hux of your arrival. He raised the possibility earlier that… well – that you may have gone rogue.”

Kylo moves so quickly that even around the corner, the air ripples with the shift in his scent. There is a choking sound, and then a slam – Rey is almost positive that he has hoisted the offending trooper up against a wall.

When Kylo speaks, his voice is eerily calm. “Insult me that way again, and I’ll rip your throat out.”

“I’m – sorry,” the man gasps, spluttering. 

“Or perhaps I’ll rip it out right now.” The soldier’s gulps and wheezes fill a tense pause as Kylo considers this. “Are you forgetting that I’m a Knight?”

“N-no –  _ please  _ –”

“Then perhaps you are forgetting the meaning of treason instead,” he continues in that quiet, dangerous tone. “Let me refresh your memory. It’s treason to disobey a Knight.”

“It’s also treason to go rogue.” Another trooper is speaking this time, his nasally voice trembling with nerves. “With all due respect, sir.”

With each long, breathless moment that follows, Rey’s heart climbs higher up her throat as she realizes what is happening. One of his troopers – his own soldiers – is threatening him… and with a gun, judging from the tension that knots the air with each passing second. Distant blaster fire and shouts mingle with the noises of the gagging trooper – presumably still dangling beneath Kylo’s fearsome grip against the wall – but around the corner, they are all silent. Waiting. Hardly even breathing.

“Lower your blaster,” Kylo says softly, “and I’ll consider letting you live afterward.”

“Where is your own blaster, sir?” The man’s nasally voice is growing steadier with growing confidence. “Why weren't you at the briefing?”

“Prax,” hisses one of the other soldiers in warning.

These troopers may not know Kylo well enough to understand the danger they are in, but from Rey’s position, inching along the wall, she can sense every implication of the threat in his words as though they were murmured directly against her ear. 

“When did it become your job, trooper, to question my authority?”

“I am only following orders myself, sir.”

“I order you,” Kylo says, “to lower your blaster.”

“I think we should check with General Hux,” says a third soldier under his breath, as his friend continues to suck in his ragged, wheezing breaths against the wall. “Proceed from there.”

Rey has always despised Armitage Hux for his casual brutality. Her feelings pale in comparison, however, to the loathing that twists Kylo’s face whenever he talks about the general. Even if it’s clear this encounter is not unfolding the way Kylo had anticipated, he is still in control. Rey can only imagine how long that would last if they were to summon Hux to render his own opinion about Kylo Ren.

“Go ahead,” Kylo is telling them. “Fetch your general. You can explain to him why you disobeyed the direct orders of a Knight before he hauls you to the execution chamber.”

As stealthily as she can, Rey peeks around the corner.

The three troopers mercifully all have their backs to her – but that’s only because they’re closing in on Kylo, who still has their friend pinned against the wall. Only one of them has their blaster drawn and leveled at him, though from twitchy hand of the man closest to her, that might change very soon.

It doesn’t matter. Even one trooper is too many to be pointing a gun at her Alpha.

Something unfamiliar and possessive is taking hold of her. Kylo Ren is  _ her _ Alpha. Hers. Every bone in Rey’s body is commanding her to soothe him –  _ please _ him – but he is too far away. And he is certainly not pleased, staring down the barrel of this traitor’s blaster when he should be with his Omega. Who the hell are these men, that they would presume to challenge their leader? That they would stand between her and her mate?

Rey’s fists clench, clammy and hot. They won’t live long enough to regret their stupidity.

She feels the moment Kylo senses her presence, the air prickling with sudden awareness. His steely eyes, boring into the trooper with the gun, slide over his shoulder to meet hers with a flicker of shock.

With a movement of her gaze, Rey communicates her intentions. A beat passes before Kylo’s chin inclines in a nearly imperceptible  nod.

The nasally trooper is still speaking. Rey doesn’t hear him. She hears nothing but the silence around her, that old, familiar friend that has carried her, invisible, through so many market stalls and crowded shops.

In the end, the troopers never stood a chance.

When she plucks the pistol from the holster of the man nearest to her, he doesn’t notice its absence until Rey pulls the trigger, lighting up his nasally friend.  For a moment, his hand grasps at his empty hip before it spasms, along with the rest of his body, as Rey then turns the firearm on him.

Kylo moves like lightning at the first shot of her blaster. Seizing his current victim by the lapels, Kylo whirls him around and hurls his flailing body at the fourth trooper – the one farthest away, who is too busy gaping at the flushed young woman cutting down his comrades to anticipate the impact until he is bowled over by his friend.

They tumble into a heap at the end of the hall. The fourth trooper attempts to scramble to his feet, but Kylo is too fast. He moves on them like a shadow – there is a sickening succession of cracks and popping bones – and then the white uniforms go limp.

Silence.

Kylo’s gaze is piercing, even from across the corridor. He’s hardly stopped looking at her since she rounded the corner. As he slowly rises to his feet, dropping the slack body of the second soldier to the floor, Kylo simply continues to stare, open and raw and all hers.

Rey’s not aware of any conscious decision to cross the hall, but a moment later, she is pressed against his long body, drawn to him like gravity. At his side once more. Where she belongs.  _ Yes. _

“I thought you didn’t need a blaster,” she smiles up at him, coy.

“I didn’t.”

“You just needed  _ my  _ blaster.” Rey intends to sound sly, but her breath catches in her throat when one large hand travels down the length of her spine, pressing her lower half flush against him.

“I need a lot of things from you, little Omega,” Kylo murmurs. “But I would have handled that just fine on my own.”

Why does his voice have to be so deep? It’s not fair, the effect he has on her, simply by opening his mouth and speaking. Rey must close her eyes and remind herself to breathe.

“You’re beautiful, you know. My beautiful little rebel.” His caress is surprisingly gentle as he strokes her jaw. With a hand that just snapped a man’s neck.

"We need to keep moving," she tells him, unwilling to move.

His kiss is tender this time. Like he is trying to communicate something unspeakable through the movement of his lips – the shivery, soul-tingling connection that sparks between them whenever they touch.

When Kylo pulls back to look at her, his eyes are soft and warm. Gently, he smooths damp hair from her forehead.

“Let's go.”

* * *

Ben has never been good at working with others.

It’s not the subordinates that cause him such great agitation. Command is a requirement of his station, and he has never had much trouble providing it. No – the difficulty has always arisen when he needs to work with those of equal rank. Such individuals are thankfully few and far between since he rose to the top of the Knights. But his impatience still makes itself known – often explosively – whenever he’s required to work with the likes of Armitage Hux, who still entertains the fantasy that his opinion as commander of the military carries as much weight as Kylo Ren’s.

_ Disrespectful. Unapproachable. Refractory. _ These are a few of the less colorful words his fellow apprentices would use to describe Ben Solo while he was still in training. Even then, it was apparent that he was meant to be a leader. This was, at least, what Snoke said on several occasions as he arranged for Ben to tackle his missions alone. Snoke seemed to delight in his favorite apprentice’s solitary nature, grooming him so that the Supreme Leader was the only person that Ben would truly respect.

Until very recently, he was.

Ben has never fought beside someone like Rey. It isn’t that she is a particularly skillful fighter – Ben has carried out missions alongside Knights with far greater technical prowess than his little thief. He forgets how young she is sometimes, how different their life experiences have been. She needs training to hone her talent. Ben will take great pleasure in providing it to her. 

But even without the training, Rey is already the partner he never knew he was lacking.

She complements him, rather than slowing him down. She anticipates what he’s going to do before the thought has finished fully forming in his own mind. They share an innate understanding of one another’s intentions, so that the result is seamless coordination, their efforts flawlessly executed as they work their way through the base.

This is probably the only reason Ben doesn’t fire on sight when they emerge in the warehouse’s main corridor and nearly barrel head-first into a pair of rebels – she doesn't fire first.

_ “Rey!” _

To his relief, Poe Dameron and his cocksure grin are nowhere to be found. Ben recognizes the woman from that night at the supply center, though he’s certain he’s never seen the man before. They are both Betas, he notes, which makes him feel only slightly less murderous when they throw their arms around his Rey and smother her with their incessant chatter.

“Why the hell did you jam the door?”

“– tried to warn you –”

“– no idea if you were hurt, or needed help, or –”

“– troopers everywhere, and more on the streets –”

“I’m fine,” Rey says, detangling herself from their embrace. “Really, I am. There will be time to explain later – we need to keep pushing forward.”

It’s only then that the others notice Ben, standing perfectly still as he watches these strangers paw at his heat-struck Omega.

_ “You,” _ hisses the man, clutching Rey’s shoulder with one meaty hand. Ben needs to clench his fists to prevent them from reaching out and breaking it.

“It’s all right, Finn.” Rey carefully removes the traitor’s hand from her arm, though Ben doesn’t miss the way she squeezes his fingers before releasing them. “He’s helping me.”

“I’m sure he is,” says the man named Finn, but the growl in his voice suggests he believes otherwise.

“We don’t have time for this,” the shorter woman snaps. “We’ve evacuated everyone. The survivors, at least.”

Rey swallows thickly. “Has anyone reached the general?”

“Her phone isn’t pinging back to us. We think she’s outside the borders. She didn’t say where she was going.”

“We’ve started dispersing to the safehouses,” Finn interjects. “They’re entering from the front, but we’ve been evacuating through the tunnel.”

Ben is unable to stay silent any longer. “The tunnel?”

“It leads out to the river,” Rey says, ignoring the suspicious glances of her friends. “We use it for smuggling, mostly.”

Of course there is a tunnel. It explains the impossible questions of how this ragtag band of terrorists has been able to smuggle proton bombs and supplies into a city with surveillance cameras on every corner. Ben isn’t sure if he is impressed at the genius of such a thing or furious for never considering it himself. “Then what are we waiting for?”

“We were coming back for  _ her,” _ Finn says, scowling. “I suppose it was your brilliant idea, then, to make it so that we couldn’t get in to warn you?”

Before Ben can answer, there is shouting down the hall, along with the shuffling of boots. They have half a second to scramble into cover before the white-cloaked soldiers appear at the end of the corridor.

If it were just the two of them, they would have been able to defend their position with ease. But it’s not just the two of them. When the soldiers begin to fire, bright lasers slicing through the air, Rey’s traitorous friends are out of step, leaving the safety of their cover at all the wrong moments.  Ben and Rey take care of the first wave of troopers easily enough, but when another group follows on their heels, everything quickly goes to hell.

It starts with the man named Finn, who leaps gallantly from behind a crate with a crude grenade in his hand. He does this without warning, so that they don’t have an opportunity to distract the soldiers with fire when he places himself directly in the path of the First Order blasters.

Finn yanks the pin off the grenade with his teeth, lifts his arm to throw - and then cries out as blaster fire catches him in the elbow.

The explosive seems to drop in slow motion. Finn falls backward, howling in pain – and Ben can only watch with horror as the grenade continues its slow descent to the ground, too far away for him to intervene, too near for him to avoid.

And then small fingers close around its casing. Familiar fingers. Rey nearly trips over her friend as she throws her body across the hall to catch the explosive mid-air; and for a moment, Ben is terrified she is going to fall. She doesn’t. She straightens, her lovely face twisted with such wild rage, and hurls the grenade toward the troopers.

Just as it explodes.

There is heat, and thick smoke, and a high-pitched ringing that Ben realizes after several moments is coming from inside his own head. In the hazy confusion that follows, the chaos beyond these things takes its time while shifting into focus – the crackling electricity of laser fire still streaking overhead, blood hot on his cheek -and someone is shouting. A name, over and over.

_ Rey.  _

Ben is thrust back into his senses with startling clarity. He doesn’t remember getting to his feet, only that he is across the hall in an instant, where Rey is slumped against a wall and panting, her friends hovering over her.

Ben snarls and shoves them out of the way.

There is blood running down her arm. Her forehead. Shrapnel, from the explosion. Ben takes a hasty catalogue of her injuries, fingers skimming over torn fabric and skin. Her eyes are open, stretched so wide that her trembling irises don't touch the top or bottom lids. 

“Rey,” he murmurs, her name like a prayer in his mouth. She is in shock. Her wounds are minor. Some stitches for the gash on her arm, perhaps. But she will be all right.

Ben realizes he is speaking aloud, reassuring his Omega as much as himself. She is nodding against his palm. Agreeing. Rey turns her face to find the tiny gland tucked inside his wrist and breathes, deeply, against the skin there. The tip of her little nose burrows into the heel of his hand. Ben’s heart squeezes tight in his chest at the way her body visibly relaxes at his nearness. His comfort.

“They're advancing!”

The man named Finn throws the words over his shoulder from his position by the crate. His arm is bleeding badly. He will not be able to shoot.

Ben looks back at his precious girl, her face still so calm as she presses it into his hand, and knows at once what he needs to do.

“Take her.” Rising, he turns to Rey’s imbecilic friends. They stare back at him in shock. “Bring her to the tunnel. Get her the fuck out of here. I will hold them.”

Rey follows him to her feet in an instant, though he doesn't miss the way she winces with pain. “Have you lost your mind?” she asks raggedly.

“This is not up for negotiation, little one.” 

“That's not going to happen.”

“You are injured,” Ben hisses, crowding her against the wall. “You are going into heat. You cannot fight like this.”

“I won’t leave you.” Wetness pools in her eyes. “I won’t.” Shiny, like her gland. Like her lips, trembling and beautiful. 

Ben does not have time to kiss them. A blast catches the crate that is serving as their cover. The soldiers are making their way down the hall.

“I will find you,” Ben promises her, and then takes the blaster from her fingers. 

When he steps out into the open, the uniformed soldiers are nearly halfway down the hall. They nearly trip over themselves in confusion at the sight of him - the Master of the Knights, a blaster in each hand, thirty-one  years of fury crackling around him like electricity.

Ben only looks back to make sure they are leaving. Her friends are half-dragging her along the way, but at least they are good for something. She will be safe. It is the only thing that is keeping him tethered to his sanity. It is all that has ever mattered.

They are rounding the corner when her wild eyes catch his for a moment, and for once Ben cannot understand what they're trying to tell him. 

Then she is gone. 

Ben lets out a roar that might have been ripped from the mouth of a dying beast. His head snaps around, and his gaze sweeps across the dozen troopers staring back at him.

He begins to shoot.

* * *

She washes the blood from her face in the river.

It stings against the hot throb of her open cuts and scrapes, but it is soothing, too – cool and sweet as it runs in rivulets down her feverish face. Crouching at the bank, Rey catches a brief glimpse of herself in the black surface – a sickly, tired thing, her face soft with moonlight and exhaustion.

“You’re going to give yourself frostbite, Peanut.”

Finn approaches from behind, squeezing her shoulder. Usually, the touch of her best friend would bring her comfort. But right now, it is too much against her hypersensitive skin. Too much, and not enough – not the contact that she is craving, nor from the person who should be giving it to her.

His eyes had been so empty, watching her leave. So defeated.

“Frostbite sounds pretty nice right about now,” Rey says under her breath. She is so damn _ hot. _ Even the coolness of the river water doesn’t dampen the flames that are slowly building again, licking at her insides. She is pretty sure she could submerge her body whole beneath the surface and it still would do nothing for her.

She decides to placate him anyway, grasping her knees and pushing herself to her feet. The mud is soft and pulpy between her toes as she steps out of the water and onto the grassy bank, where a tiny shed peeks out from the trees.

Rose is looping thick rope around the trunk of a nearby oak, anchoring the rowboat to land. Half in the water, half in the mud, it sways with the gentle movement of the tide. The river is like glass tonight, but it still whispers and tugs along the belly of the boat. Trying to pull it deeper.

“He’ll be all right, Rey. They can’t touch him.” Rose has finished securing the knot, and now she is approaching them, high grass rustling along her boots with each step. “He’s one of Snoke’s favorites.”

The skyline of the Capital glistens over the black expanse of the river. Bright lights, tall buildings that stretch along the distant shore – and then near-darkness when the business district gives way to the docks and the markets, where electricity is limited in the evening.

“Poe is waiting for us at the bridge,” Finn is telling them. “We’ve gotten a ton of responses from the network. More than enough places to wait it out until we get word from Leia. There’s a family about four miles from here with a few extra beds for us. In the Shady Hollow community. You’ve done a few hits there, haven’t you, Rey?”

Behind her, the rowboat creaks softly, water lapping at its sides. A slow, gentle rhythm.

“Rey?”

She presses two fingers to the gland at her throat, pulsing with her heartbeat.

“I’m not going with you,” Rey says abruptly, and pushes past them to march toward the shed. 

“What did you say?”

“I have my own safehouse.” The door groans as she pushes it open, revealing several old, unmotorized bicycles. She pulls out the nearest, dusting off the cobwebs that have collected there. 

“What the hell are you talking about?” Finn steps in front of her. Even in the waning moonlight, she can see that his face is tight with panic. “We’re not splitting up again.”

“I’m going into heat, Finn.” Rey’s stomach cramps at the thought, and she grips the handlebars so tightly that her skin stretches white around her knuckles. “Even if this family were willing to host an Omega starting her cycle, it’s not safe for me to stay in some stranger’s house while I’m like this.”

Finn runs his hands over his face, making a noise of frustration. “I don’t like this.”

“I don’t either.” Rey tries to look more confident than she feels. “But I know what I’m doing. There will be a phone there – I’ll connect to the channel as soon as I can.”

Rose appears at his side. From the look on her face, it’s clear that she understands Rey’s intentions in a way that Finn does not. “As long as you contact us as soon as you can.” Shrugging off her backpack, Rose pulls something out of the largest compartment and offers it to her. It’s not until the moonlight catches her friend’s small hand that Rey can make out the shape of her leather pouch, bulging with all her familiar tools.

It’s a small thing, but she feels nearly dizzy with relief. “Thank you.”

Rose pulls her into a hug. “Ten seconds this time,” she says quietly into Rey’s hair. “We won’t be there to warn you if anyone’s coming.”

* * *

The willows are naked tonight. They were yellow, the last time she was here – soft, instead of spindly and jagged, arms stretched toward the sky. Wanting.

Rey glides silently down the wide street, no longer pedaling. The wheels of the bicycle whir as they carry her across the smooth pavement. Past the camera at the corner. Past the sign, its fine sloping letters illuminated by a street lamp:  _ Fleetwood Court. _ Past the manicured hedges of the wealthy families who almost never think of the masses crammed into the Capital a few miles away, producing the goods that sustain this enclave of luxury.

The driveway is empty, as it was the first night she was here. It’s only been a month, but it’s as though a hundred years have passed since that night when she first crept along this lawn, bantering with Rose in her earpiece.

_ One of Snoke’s guys _ , Rose had said.  _ A real hot shot. _

_ You need to watch yourself. _

Rey does not bother to stick to the shadows this time. She slips off the bike and walks it up the cobblestone driveway. Her feet leave little muddy prints as she goes, stone rough against the bottoms of her toes.

It’s hard to think. Her thoughts are murky, indistinct in the smog that is settling over her mind. But when Rey reaches the sliding glass door, her fingers find the tools in her pouch automatically.

She could do this in her sleep.

His scent, when the lock clicks open, is just as strong as the first day. Perhaps even stronger, now that she’s not on suppressants. But it is soothing in a way that it hadn’t been that first night. Familiar. It is a blanket to smother the disquiet that has been crawling like panic under her skin since their parting. 

It is hers.

It takes her a moment, swaying slightly in the doorway, to realize that the alarm never started going off. With a spike of fear, her fumbling fingers immediately fly to its casing – before she realizes it’s already been deactivated.

Kylo never turned it back on. Perhaps he was hoping she’d return.

Rey’s chest is tight as she closes the door behind her and flicks the lock.

She knows the path to his bedroom by heart. She has relived this moment so many times, both in sleep and in the darkness just before, lying in her bunk. Another lifetime ago.

It has a strange, ghostly quality, this place. Like it hasn’t truly been lived in. They may have only stayed at that cabin for ten days, but she feels as though Kylo left more of himself there than however much time he’s spent living in this cold, sprawling house.

His bedroom is not cold. When Rey steps over the threshold, a fresh wave of heat ripples violently through her, flames licking down her spine, and she briefly needs to lean against the doorway for support. She can  _ smell  _ them here – both of them – the scent of their coupling so strong even a month after the fact. It’s no wonder Kylo was having such difficulty putting her out of his head. Rey makes a soft, tormented sound and heads straight for his bed – larger than the one they’d shared together, and so much softer. She throws herself atop the blankets, clutching them to her face. They smell like him – like  _ her  _ – like the way his fingers twist when they’re as deep as they can go inside her, the way his lips curl when she starts to beg.

_ “Please,”  _ she whimpers, as though he can hear her. As though her Alpha will be kind – as though he will finally cave to the tremble in her voice and the tears streaming down her face and let her  _ come _ . 

_ “Please...”  _ Rey twists her flaming body in his blankets, trying to drown herself in his scent, but it’s not enough. Her thighs are growing wet, and everything is getting hotter by the second – it’s  _ unbearable,  _ how hot she is. Like her temperature will never stop climbing, her skin bright and red, the way she gets when she’s in the sun for too long. And in her belly, the deep and infinite  _ ache  _ for her Alpha to touch her. To fuck her –  _ please  _ – to take his pleasure from her body, to open her up wide and fill her with everything that he has.

She chokes out a sob – “ _ please  _ Alpha please please  _ please _ –” but he isn’t here. There will be no relief, without him. She will burn up until there’s nothing left of her, until her body is limp and useless and  _ empty _ . Until it ends her.

Head spinning, she pushes herself off the bed. Stumbles across the carpet. The doorknob to the closet is cool until it warms beneath her palm, but the respite she is seeking is beyond the door. It swings open to a row of suits, his scent even stronger in this tiny space. Rey rubs her wet face against them, breath hitching, and then crawls inside, letting the silk and wool and cashmere brush against her sore skin.

When she closes the door, the closet falls into blessed darkness. There is only Rey, the scent of her Alpha, and the softness all around her. She curls her body around her knees, shuddering with another cramp, and shuts her eyes.

“Please,” she whispers. “Please, Ben... please...” It is a mantra, murmured over and over to the darkness of the closet, before she is finally swallowed up into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was super plotty but hopefully it was not too much!!! There is going to be a decided lack of plot in the next chapter, if that makes you guys feel better ;) Thank you for your patience with this update (and all my other poor neglected WIPs). You guys are the best readers in the world and your encouragement brings me so much joy.
> 
> (come say hello on [twitter](https://twitter.com/ohwise1ne)!!)


	14. Chapter 14

The road out of the Capital is deserted as the sun begins to rise, pink-purple bruises stamped across the horizon.

It means that Ben can drive as fast as he pleases. Probably too fast, considering his lack of sleep and his even greater lack of patience. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about much of anything, at this point, beyond tearing apart the entire damn countryside until he finds her.

Abruptly, Ben mashes his fingers on the buttons lining the door. He needs to roll the windows down. All of them. He can’t think through the stench of his own disquiet, rolling off him like a sulfurous cloud.

Cold air floods the interior of the vehicle, raising gooseflesh along his arms. To his aggravation, it does nothing to settle his thoughts. They continue to whirl and churn with the consequences of the past several hours.

Supreme Leader Snoke had been... displeased, that Ben had failed to deliver the girl. _Deliberate disobedience,_ Snoke called it. Ben did not argue. He is not to report for duty until the Supreme Leader determines a proper punishment. Hux had oozed satisfaction in the corner, all but panting with eagerness as he watched their master dress down the great Kylo Ren through his holopad.

But his lecture had been uninspired. Even Snoke could not muster too much displeasure after the day’s victories.

The Resistance base had been identified and captured, after all. Their supplies were commandeered, their weapons confiscated. Many escaped, of course, and none were taken alive for questioning. But without a center of command, without supplies and – most importantly – without weapons… there would be no more war.

The Resistance, Supreme Leader Snoke announced through the mouth of his flickering holo-projection, is dead.

Ben does not have the energy nor the desire to contemplate the validity of this declaration right now. Snoke is unaware of the number of rebel soldiers who escaped. He is equally oblivious to the role his own apprentice played in abetting their evacuation. When Hux’s personal brigade finally arrived, long after Ben had slaughtered the last of his reinforcements in that blood-slick corridor, it took hardly any effort to convince them that he had just arrived himself – that the rebels had facilitated this massacre, rather than the highest-ranking member of the Knights. The fallen troopers had been a loss, to be sure, but a worthwhile one, if it brought about the end of what Snoke believed was the only true threat to his rule.

Not so long ago, this thought might have led Ben to consider all the ways he himself was a threat to Supreme Leader Snoke. But such trivialities are the last thing on his mind right now.

Ben will return to his home on Fleetwood Court. He will load his car with enough clothing and food to last both of them several days. He’s not sure where he will find her, and she may be too weak to travel very far. Ben is not fond of the idea of tending to her heat in the backseat of a vehicle, but he will do whatever he needs in order to care for her.

It is agony that he is not with her at this very moment, caring for her right now. It is torment beyond anything he has ever known.

Dead leaves kick up in great gusts as he speeds into his neighborhood. The sky is starting to glow, that surreal stretch of not-twilight when the night seems to have decided to depart all on its own, just before the sun peeks over the curve of the earth.

After Ben shuts off his car, his eyes catch on his reflection in the rear-view mirror. He looks haggard. Desperate. There is blood in his hair. He will need to wash that out, before he finds her – Rey is deserving of an Alpha who is clean for her. Who doesn’t stink of blood and death. She deserves so much more than he will ever be able to provide. His stomach turns with the truth of this. She deserves a man she doesn’t feel the need to run away from.

He quickly decides there is no time for any of that – for cleaning, or for the indulgence of his pathetic tendencies toward self-pity. Rey is out there somewhere. She is alone. And Ben’s ragged heart will be clawing its way out of his chest every single minute that he is forced to spend apart from her.

The early morning air is crisp in his lungs, when he climbs out of his car. Rejuvenating. It fills him with new life. He believes it could fuel several days without sleeping, if that’s what it takes to find his girl. Grabbing his blaster from the passenger seat, Ben locks his car and heads straight across the lawn to the front porch.

He is making a mental list of some likely safehouse locations when he unlocks the front door. Two steps inside is all it takes for it to hit him.

Distantly, he realizes that his hands have started to shake. From the prison of his battered ribcage, his heart gives a lurch of unthinkable, disbelieving hope.

_Rey._

This place has smelled of her since the first day he found her in his closet. She had looked so small, that night, when he threw open the door and discovered her hiding there. So afraid. Drunk on her own fear, and impossibly so. From that very first day, Ben knew how much she enjoyed handing over her control.

Her scent is so clear now. Ridiculously potent. So is her fear – but it’s of a different kind than the terror she had worn that day, on high alert of the danger he might pose.

No… This is the fear of his Omega, desperate to find her mate. To find _him._

“Rey.” He speaks her name aloud this time. His voice is hoarse and tentative, as though using it too loudly might break the spell and take the hint of her presence with it. It doesn’t. His heart races as he takes another step into the house, further into the thick headiness of _Rey,_ throbbing hot and heavy in the air. His Omega, all around him. His precious, beautiful, _clever_ girl.

She is here.

Ben scarcely has enough presence of mind to lock the front door. He takes the stairs three at a time, dropping his keys somewhere along the way. The bedroom is empty, the blankets rumpled; for one heart-stopping moment, he fears she might have passed through this place and then _left,_ that she assumed he wouldn’t come back for her.

No. Ben breathes deeply – a shuddering, delirious breath – and his feet carry him straight to the closet. To the door he has opened so many times while remembering her sweet little face, blinking up at him in awe.

He doesn’t need to remember, this time.

Rey is curled up on the floor, eyes heavy with sleep and fever. Her sleep clothes are torn and stained from her injuries. Her hair is matted with blood.

She is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

“Ben,” she says raggedly, tears making wet tracks down her red cheeks. They are tears of relief, he realizes. Of immense joy. No one has ever looked at him that way, he thinks with a small amount of wonder. He is sure of it.

Her body is a small furnace as he scoops her into his arms. She hiccups into his shoulder, delicate hands grasping at his shirt. “Ben,” she repeats wetly. He can’t even be angry, that she would call him by that name. There is no room in him for anything at all but the fierce and infinite affection he has for this girl, trembling and soft in his arms.

“I was afraid,” Rey tells him, her voice warbling with tears. “I was – _so_ afraid, that they would take you – that they would – _hurt you –”_

“I’m here,” he murmurs. “Hush, little one. I am here. I’m yours.”

Ben is reluctant to let go of her, once he has carried her to the bed. He crawls up the mattress so that he can hover protectively over her body as he strips off her clothes, swift and methodical. She whines when he reaches her sleep pants. The friction must be such torture against her poor, neglected sex.

He licks his lips. The wetness on her thighs glistens in the early morning light that spills through the window – his Omega, already soaking through her pants for him. _For him_ , his mind seems to snag on the thought, kicking off an endless mantra – _for him, for him, for him._

“I’ll make it all better,” Ben croons, as though he is soothing a small, flighty creature. He can’t get her naked quickly enough; she is already panting, little whimpers eking out with each exhale. Her eyes are wide as they follow his movements, imploring him.

Ben knows how far to push his girl, when she needs him to press and prod and torment her until her body is close to breaking.

This is not one of those moments.

At the first touch of his fingers, sliding through wet sticky warmth, Rey lets out a long, high-pitched whine. It travels down his body and straight to his cock, which grows impossibly harder in his pants. Ben ignores it. His pleasure is meaningless right now, when Rey is so pathetic and needy for her Alpha’s touch. He is telling her as much, he realizes, speaking in a low, urgent voice against her lips as his fingers move between her legs, working her into a frenzy.

“You’ve been so _good_ for me,” he says, kissing her gasping mouth. “Coming here, like such a good girl. Waiting for your Alpha. _Yes,_ Rey… You knew I would take such good care of you, didn’t you? How _nice_ I would make you feel?”

Rey is babbling, broken words that stretch across her sharp and irregular breaths. _Alpha_ and _Ben_ and _please,_ over and over. Body twisting and jerking beneath his hands.

“I think,” he breathes, pressing his forehead against hers, “you deserve to come.”

Ben slides two fingers inside her body, _curling,_ and she arches off the bed with a silent shout. Rey is always so beautiful, when her orgasm takes her, but she is especially so right now – her eyes locked on his face, radiating gratitude and awe as he works her through the release she has been seeking so desperately.

He doesn’t pull away (and it is a long, slow slide, fingers dripping wet with her desire) until her body finishes clenching in rhythmic waves, seeking a knot that isn’t there. Even then, her eyes don’t lose that wild, frantic look, watching him as though she fears he’ll disappear if she looks away.

“You’re here,” she whispers, as he pulls off his shirt.

Fresh tears are rolling down her face. Ben’s chest constricts pathetically at the sight. She shouldn’t be crying. She shouldn’t have had any reason to think, even for a second, that he wouldn’t see her through this.

“Of course,” he tells her hoarsely. “Of course I’m here.”

Fingers brush across his brow. They come away tipped with blood, and her eyes widen impossibly further. “You’re hurt,” Rey says, voice laced with panic. “They hurt you. Are you… are you all right –?”

He exhales in a shudder at her touch. “It's nothing. Scrapes and scratches. Nothing more.”

“But… there were so many…” Rey blinks up at him, her expression full of such wonder and admiration that his heart might overflow with it. “You took them all?”

He indulges in a smirk. “Sometimes I think you forget who I am. They didn’t stand a chance.”

A shiver rolls through her body, stretched out beneath him. She likes that. Oh, yes. He can smell how much she likes that. Ben cards his hands through her hair, relishing the way she leans into his touch.

“Did you enjoy that, little one? Watching me slaughter all those men for you?” He can’t resist clenching his fist in her hair a little, just for her sweet little intake of breath. “I would have killed a hundred more for my lovely Omega.”

 _“Yes.”_ It's not clear if she's agreeing with him, an acknowledgement of her delicious infatuation with his power, or urging him to continue touching her. He decides it doesn't matter. Rey rolls her neck, lips parting, pressing her scalp into his hands. The movement gives him a perfect view of the fiery-red gland on her neck, damp hair clinging to its edges. His stomach flips over.

“You’re getting hot again just thinking about it, aren’t you?” Ben’s grip tightens in her hair, exposing her throat even further to him. “I enjoyed it too, you know. Watching you fight them. I almost took you right there – right on the floor. You would have let me.” The swollen skin beneath her ear actually _twitches_ under his examination; his cock gives a corresponding throb.

Rey seems to notice. Her little fingers find the length of him, painfully hard. Even through the fabric, the drag of her palm is burning hot as it slides over him. Ben can barely breathe.

“You can take me now,” she tells him, breath coming a little faster. “Right now, Alpha. Please. You can have me."

That’s all it takes. Ben has denied himself for far too long now. From her little charade in the interrogation room, followed by the endless agony of these many long hours without her – wandering around in skin that is too tight and thrumming with tension, his body preparing itself to care for his Omega. To serve her.

He cannot bear to wait a second longer.

“I was going to make you beg for this.” Ben is stripping away the rest of his clothes, kicking off his shoes. He is trying to sound authoritative, but all his nerve endings seem to be buzzing with greedy anticipation. “It was all I could think about. How sweet you would look as I denied you. Pleading for me to fill you. To show you _mercy.”_

"You - you wouldn't." The shock in her expression is so endearing, Ben almost wishes that he had the patience to draw this out a little longer. He doesn't. His patience ran out somewhere between all the empty rooms in his family's cabin - and the biting metal of those restraints, holding him fast to the chair while he watched Rey fuck herself on his empty glove.

“I would.” He is finally naked. “And you would let me. You’d let me do anything that I want to you.”

“Yes,” she breathes. Her eyes snag on the shape of his arousal. “But – isn’t this what you want? To be inside your Omega?”

She reaches for him again – soft fingertips, feathering along his bare cock. _Fuck._ Ben snatches her wrist and wrenches it over her head so quickly that she hisses.

“I want you to be a good girl,” he says, “and hold onto this tight so that I can fuck you properly.”

He presses her fingers to the cold iron bars of his headboard, and she curls them around the metal, licking her lips. So obedient for him.

“Very good,” he breathes, and runs his hands up her legs. His thumbs catch along the slick skin of her inner thighs, and he digs them into her softness, spreading her. She is so fucking _wet._ Dripping down her legs. Ben wants to make her drip with something else.

Rey is already getting aroused again. It’s hardly been a minute since she came, but he can smell how much she needs him, so soon after he brought her to climax.

It makes him almost dizzy with delight.

“Or maybe…” He can’t resist running his fingers through her dripping sex. It’s obscene, really, just how wet she is. “Maybe I want to tease you for a bit after all.”

He has no intention of doing so, of course – can hardly hold himself back from hauling her hips up and driving himself into her – and how _good_ it would feel, how hot and tight and welcoming her little body would be. Ben’s thumb twitches against her thigh. But it’s worth the bluff, just to see the way her eyes widen with fear.

“Please.” She is starting to tremble under his gaze, fingers flexing against the iron bars. “You can’t. Please. It hurts.”

“I thought you liked it when it hurts.”

“Not like this.” Rey’s eyes are welling with fat tears. He finds he doesn’t mind the crying so much, in this context.

“But I think you deserve to hurt a little,” he murmurs. “After what you did to me today. Did you think you were being coy, with your little show?”

Defiance briefly wars with the desire in her face. “You didn’t seem to mind.”

Ben gives her thigh a cruel, hard pinch. Her body jerks spectacularly in response, sucking in a ragged breath. “Would you like me to show you how much I minded?”

“No, no, please –” The words come out in one long, desperate rush. “Please, Alpha, I’ll be good, I swear – I just need you to – _please_ –”

“Do you think you deserve to be fucked, Rey?”

She hesitates. Her lips quivers. As though she’s actually considering it.

Ben cannot hold himself back any longer.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart.” He lifts her legs off the bed, tugging them over his shoulders. “You’ll get your punishment later.”

The tremble in his hands may betray his eagerness, but he doesn’t care. She’s here, his sweet girl – ready and warm and all for him. After everything they’ve been through. He grips his cock and drags it messily along the heat between her legs.

Rey keens.

“Shhhh.” He eases the tip of his cock against her entrance, clenching and wet. “I’m going to make it _all_ better.”

Her body is like wet flame as he eases himself inside. She makes the sweetest little sound – a tiny, breathless _oh_ that falls so gently from her lips – but Ben can hardly hear it through the roaring in his ears. He has spilled blood for this moment. For this Omega. And he knows right then that he would do it all again, just to watch the way her face changes – mouth straining with pleasure, as he splits her wide open.

To see the reverence in her eyes, staring up at him like he is the sun and the stars and everything in between.

“Is this what you needed?”

 _“Yes,”_ Rey whines, as he starts to roll his hips. The hot drag of her body along his cock is a maddening sort of pleasure, the kind that makes it difficult to think or breathe or remember anything but the squeeze of her perfect little cunt all around him.

“Is this what you thought about, while you were touching yourself in front of me? Like a little tease?” Ben’s thrusts are growing deeper, more ragged. He feels his grasp on his self-control rapidly slipping away.

“Yes,” Rey gasps, lovely face twisting up at him, “please, Alpha, I’ve – been thinking about it – all _day –”_

“Do you know what I was thinking about?” His voice is rough with pleasure. So deep, it’s nearly a growl. “I’m going to do it all to you, little one. And you’re going to _take_ it – just – like –  _that._ My good, _good_ girl.”

There will be bruises on her waist, when Ben is done with her. The thought makes his stomach clench pleasantly. He readjusts his grip – fingers slipping a little on her sweat-slick skin – and starts to give her what she needs.

Rey’s scent has shifted, now that he’s truly fucking her. It swirls, blending with his own, a heady cocktail of need and sweat and completion. Is this what they would smell like, he wonders, if they were mated? If he pressed his nose into her hair and bit into her gland, so ripe and swollen for him? She is beautiful, spread out beneath him like this – her arms above her holding her body open like an offering. He wants to gorge himself on her. He wants to submerge himself in her softness, in all of the blazing ferocity of her, and never come up for air.

Her fingers keep slipping on the bars of the headboard, forearms straining with the effort of holding herself in place for him. The fifth time this happens, she lets out a noise of frustration _(and he loves how she whimpers, oh god, for him),_ releasing to grasp at her pillow instead.

Ben is on her in an instant, fingers like a vice around her wrist. She is nearly bent in half, the way he leans deep into her so that he can stare directly into her face.

“You’re not following my instructions, Rey.”

“Alpha,” she gasps, “I’m trying –”

“Don’t you want to come? Why should I let you, if you can’t – pay – attention?”

Rey’s mouth trembles with a mewl, fingers spasming on the metal bars, as he continues fucking into her pliant body. So helpless, in her heat. Ben quite likes her this way.

“These little hands of yours are causing a lot of trouble.” He slows his pace so that he can run his fingers along the sticky glands at her wrists. Rey seems to be struggling to breathe. “Perhaps I need to tie them here.”

“Please, Alpha.” She sounds so shattered. Her fingers are curled obediently around the headboard again. “I’ll be good. I swear.”

“That’s right.” Ben feels drunk on the pleasure of it. He begins to drive into her again, blood roaring in his ears. “You’ll be whatever I want you to be.”

When she tips over the edge for the second time, she does so with his name in the damp space between them, her body lifting completely off the bed as her climax takes her.

He should slow down, perhaps. Hold her for a little while. Pet her hair, wipe the sweat from her brow, and let her catch her breath before he continues. They have many days of this – there will be plenty of time for him to take his pleasure.

Ben is not a kind man.

She sucks in a ragged breath as his fingers glide down her waist, squeezing her hips as he positions her for a better angle. The next time he slides into her, the force of it yanks a broken cry from her throat. Her body is sliding up the mattress with each thrust now – harder than before, and punishing. Ben pours all his frustration into the rhythm, the frantic desperation of the past several sleepless days – his terror that he might not see her through this.

“I’m here,” he hears his ragged voice telling her. “I have you, Omega. I’m here.”

He cannot bring himself to chastise her, the next time she releases the headboard. She reaches for him, her fingers finding his face. His ears.

His glands.

Ben’s orgasm slams into him without warning – a headlong, delirious rush of sensation that floods through his body before converging on his cock. He pulses, _hard,_ as his knot swells, so rapidly that Rey nearly wails with pleasure beneath him. It doesn’t stop. He continues to throb as he fills her, over and over – long, toe-curling spurts that leave him panting and whimpering against her shoulder.

 _“Yes,”_ Rey slurs into his ear, breath hot and shuddering against his skin. “Please, yes, Alpha – all of it. Give me all of it. Yes.”

He scarcely has the strength to roll them over, but he manages – Rey does not need to be crushed, and all of the bones in Ben’s body are in sudden danger of losing their solidity. As soon as he flips them around, they do. She curls into his chest like a small kitten, still breathing heavily.  
  
"Thank you," she whispers against the thrum of his heartbeat, again and again. "Thank you."

Ben rubs his hands up and down her spine. The smooth muscle of her upper back. In the fog of his memory, an image rises with startling clarity - Rey, the last time they were in this bed together. He is overwhelmed with the same amount of gratitude and awe as he was that evening, her body warm and soft, so small beneath his hands.  
  
He doesn't deserve this girl, but the universe has gifted him with her.

“I’m… glad,” he tells her breathlessly. A trembling confession in her hair. “So glad you came back, Rey.”

He’s not sure if she hears, drunk with fever above him. “Feels good,” she murmurs, rolling her hips on his knot. The sensation makes his eyes roll back in his head.

“Yes.” Ben lifts her face to him, indulgent. His fingers grasp her chin so that he can kiss her. “You’ve been so good for me, sweetheart.”

His stomach churns to think of what she will do when this is over. Some small, terrified part of him fears that she will slip out in the night again - that this has all been a fluke of her hormones and the powerful attraction between them. _She left,_ his mind whispers, the words like poison in his ears. _She will leave you again._

Ben pulls her even closer, snaring her in the possessive circle of his arms. A soft sigh of satisfaction fans across the sweat cooling on his chest, and Rey nuzzles deeper against him.

She won't leave. He will do everything in his power to keep her here. Everything.

He will be worthy of her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thursday, friends! Have some porn!  
> I'm sure everyone has a lot of questions and there's a lot that needs to be resolved between our babies. But Rey is in heat and they just need to fuck it out for a bit :)


	15. Chapter 15

Rey longs to fall into sleep like this, her Alpha warm and sprawling underneath her boneless limbs. But when his knot finally slips from between her thighs, he insists they need a wash - eyes flitting over her forehead, where Rey knows blood has crusted on her brow. So she listens.

Kylo does not have a tub. She is immediately disappointed by this. The idea of being separated from him for any length of time is repulsive. She had imagined he would seat her between his legs, as he had so often in their cabin, and wash her in the bathwater until she was rosy and fresh for him.

Sensing her displeasure, he gives her a sly grin. “Don’t worry, little one. There's enough room for both of us."

She can smell his triumph on the air, the way he delights in her need for him. Rey is clear-headed enough to be irritated by the obvious gloating in his voice, but not enough to deny him.

His bathroom is – huge. The biggest bathroom she’s ever been in. Rey tries not to stare, but Kylo is watching her avidly, soaking up her every reaction. He seems to savor her amazement. Like he is giving her a gift.

Rey decides to let herself gape after all, just for the satisfaction that rolls off him in response.

“This belongs to you now.” Kylo steps behind her, fingers dancing along her arms. “Everything I have.”

 _And I belong to you._ The thought is unexpected. She’s not sure where these thoughts come from anymore – if they originate in that deep, primitive Omega place inside her, or from somewhere else altogether.

There are two sinks in the vanity, set beneath a mirror that stretches all the way to the tall ceiling. Kylo does not give her a chance to take in her bedraggled reflection. He leads her across the tile, past a glass door and into a large, open shower. A wooden bench stretches along the wall, and Kylo brings her to it, coaxing her to sit on its edge.

It does something funny to her insides, watching him gather soaps and small bottles. Caring for her. As if he's done this a hundred times before.

"Will they come for us?" The question is barely above a whisper - the first words she's spoken since her voice grew hoarse from begging him.

"They won't."

"How do you know?"

"I took care of it." Kylo's back is to her, mixing something in a bottle, but Rey doesn't need to see his face to know it is frowning. "We have time."

Rey bites her lip. "But – he's not... angry?"

It's clear who she is referring to. The slope of Kylo's shoulders stiffens. "We won't speak of him, while we're here." He turns so that he can convey the importance of this request with his expression – firm, but mixed with a quiet desperation beneath the surface. Almost like a plea. "We won't speak about any of it."

She only stares at him.

"Rey. I took care of it." His hand flexes impatiently at his side. "Do you trust me?"

There is a heartbeat of hesitation. Because Rey... she's not completely sure if she does. Not with this. But it's hard to think when her thoughts are so muddy. Her Alpha... he is _right here_. Naked. Gathering soaps and shampoos to wash her with. This is the man she has chosen to see her through her heat - and Rey must appease him.

When she nods, something in Kylo's face softens. “We won’t speak of it,” he says quietly, almost to himself, before returning to his task.

Rey leans back against the cool, marble wall, watching him. The decision is like the relief that comes after setting down a heavy burden. It feels good, she realizes, to let go. To let him take care of her. He _will_ take care of her.

With this, at least, she can trust him.

There is the sound of running water, and then Kylo reappears with a basin in one hand and his basket of bottles in the other. Rey frowns at him, confused.

"I thought we were having a shower."

"We are.” Kylo sets the basin on the ground. It sloshes against the edges. And then he kneels.

"But –”

He lifts her legs as he slides the basin in front of her. Rey’s feet sink into the water, hot velvet that slips between her toes up to her ankles. She makes a soft noise of pleasure, and Kylo looks earnestly into her eyes. “Let me do this for you first."

The hot water feels so _good_ around her feet. She didn’t realize how much they were aching. She has been barefoot since she woke in the night to the sound of gunfire, padding down the corridors in her sleep clothes to answer her Alpha's call. Her skin is hot, but the water is hotter, and somehow – it is not unpleasant.

“Your little feet looked so sore,” Kylo murmurs. His hands are gentle as they slide down her left leg. Into the basin. “This will help.”

When his thumbs drag a firm path up the arch of her foot, Rey thinks she is going to melt against the wooden bench. But it is impossible for her to look away. The sight of Kylo Ren on his knees before her is… arresting. She knows she is in heat – that she is completely at his mercy right now. But she feels a rush of power, staring down at him, as he rubs soapy water into her skin. Her Alpha, naked and kneeling for her.

The image is making her wet again. Slick trickles down her thighs, and Rey squirms, pressing them together. Kylo seems to notice. His nostrils flare; his hands grip her foot a little tighter. When his eyes flick up to hers, she is impaled by his gaze, piercing and utterly still.

“Only if you’re good.”

“But –”

“If you’re _good,_ Rey.” The distinct edge of his thumbnail drags along her instep – a warning. It takes all of her willpower not to flail, because she knows he won't want her to. “Be still for me.”

Rey gives him a tiny, trembling nod. His grip on her foot loosens a bit, but his touch is still firm as he begins to massage in slow and steady circles. They start at the heel, travel up the tender arch of her foot and – after a few misplaced touches that startle her into giggles – end at her toes. Kylo takes his time with those, squeezing them gently, one by one, between his giant thumb and forefinger.

Rey is… very affected, by all of this. Unreasonably so. She is breathing too hard for how little he’s touched her – but it feels so intimate. No one has ever touched her feet this way. She’s not sure if _she’s_ ever touched herself the way he is right now – like she is something beautiful. Something to be treasured.

“Every part of you,” she catches him murmuring, so low she almost doesn’t hear. “I will have all of it.”

A long, slow breath leaves her when he releases her ankle. She hopes he’ll keep moving up her legs now – to her thighs, which are now sticky with slick – and even higher, where she is already aching for him to fill her again.

Instead, he gently lifts her other foot and begins to afford it the same mind-numbing, meticulous treatment as he did its partner. Rey slumps against the wall, tingling pleasure slowly spreading from her toes up the rest of her body.

“Alpha,” she murmurs, as he works slowly past her heel. “It – _ahhh…_ feels good. But... can we –”

The next time his fingers flutter across that ticklish spot along the ball of her foot, the touch feels intentional. Shocked laughter bubbles out of her, and Rey’s leg kicks in his grasp.

Kylo is wearing a decidedly mischievous expression as he glances up at her. “Something wrong?” His fingers dance along the same place, and another peal of giggles escapes her.

“That _tickles.”_

“Does it?”

“Yes, it – oh! You know it does.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kylo says, very solemnly, and tickles her again.

“Stop that,” Rey says with a breathless grin, trying to tug her foot out of his grasp. But something about this demand makes his expression darken, and suddenly his fingers are digging into her ankle, holding her firm.

“Where do you think you’re going, Omega?”

Her laughter falters in her throat. There’s nothing submissive about the look he’s giving her now. Even on his knees, the shape of his massive body seems to vibrate with authority.

“You’re tickling me.” A whine has crept into her voice. Rey hates it. Almost as much as she hates the way her stomach is squirming, her body immediately responding to his tone.

“I told you to stay still.”

“I _can’t_ when you’re doing that.”

“Pity. How am I supposed to touch you _here,”_ he murmurs, fingers trailing up past her knees, “when I’m not even past your feet – and you already can’t control yourself.”

That coil in her belly is beginning to wind tighter again, hot like a spring that's been sitting too long in the sun. Her legs fall open, spreading for him. “Please,” she breathes. “I can. I will.”

“Hmm. I’m not convinced.” Kylo’s fingers brush lazily between her thighs. A long, sticky string of slick clings to them as he lifts his hand in the air for her inspection. “Look what a mess you’re making all over my bench. My messy little Omega.”

“I can’t help it,” Rey whines with impatience. “I’m – I’m in heat –”

“Is that any reason to forget your manners?”

Kylo lifts his hand, still shiny with her arousal, and brings it to her mouth. His thumb strokes her bottom lip. A wordless command.

Rey finds herself grateful for an instruction she can actually obey.

Leaning forward, she parts her lips. The sharp-sweet taste smacks her tongue as his thumb slides inside her mouth. It’s tangy, but not unpleasant. Especially with the thickness of his thumb, stretching the corners of her mouth.

“Good girl.” Kylo’s eyes are almost black as they observe her. “Now lick it off.”

Her body is even warmer, somehow, with him watching her like this. Rey doesn’t look away as she laps at the pad of his finger. She is tentative at first, little fluttering strokes across the salty tip of his thumb. The first brush of her tongue makes his pupils explode, fixed intently on her mouth. On the wet glide of her lips, wrapped around his knuckle.

It makes her feel daring.

Rey leans forward, taking him deeper. When she starts to suckle, he makes a strained noise in the back of his throat. Rey shudders with pleasure, and before she realizes what she’s doing, she is grasping at his wrist, pulling his hand closer. Holding him steady as she licks and slurps the rest of her stickiness from his thumb.

“Yes,” Kylo hisses. He stares at her, enraptured. “Such a sweet little mouth. Made just so I could fill it up. Just like the rest of you.”

Rey whines around his finger. His satisfaction drips down her spine like molten pleasure, pooling at her tailbone. _Alpha is pleased._ She grasps at his wrist, trying to bring him closer – and accidentally rubs against the gland there.

The groan that escapes him is long and loud.

It’s enough to give Rey pause. He is perfectly still before her, breath trembling on its way in and out of his lungs. With a surge of boldness, Rey slides his thumb from her lips, lowers her mouth – and moves it over his scent gland.

 _“Rey.”_ Her name sounds like it is pulled from him unwillingly. A quiet, desperate noise. She decides she likes how it sounds this way.

“So good,” she murmurs. Gently, she presses a kiss to the shiny, pink skin that stretches across his pulse. It races madly beneath her lips. “You taste so good, Alpha. Like you want to fuck me.”

His fingers close around her jaw, yanking her head to the side. “I just finished fucking you.”

“You already want to again,” Rey says breathlessly, even as he tilts her head farther backward. When she realizes what he’s doing – baring her throat for him – she moans, a gasping, helpless noise.

“Greedy little thing.” Kylo’s thumb, still wet from her mouth, flicks roughly across her own scent gland, swollen and inflamed beneath her ear. A full-body shudder courses through her. “Stop distracting me, and I will."

He releases her jaw. Rey is almost disappointed, until his hands grasp her knees, yanking them roughly apart.

"But we should take care of this mess first."

With no other warning, he leans forward – hair tickling her skin – and buries his face directly between her thighs.

Rey cries out, a shamefully high-pitched sound, but this only encourages him. Kylo's fingers make dimples where they dig into her skin, keeping her wide and exposed. They pin her firmly to the seat as he licks and sucks and kisses between her legs.

The fire is back. It spreads from her groin, up her torso, a racing-tingling-burning that she feels all the way in her fingernails. Rey can't breathe for how much she needs to come. It is suddenly the only thing she can think about – the only thing she knows – his full mouth working her, suckling her, licking and licking and _licking_ and –

He pulls away, and Rey actually sobs with despair. Her eyes fly open to find him staring between her legs. His chin glistens with slick, eyes liquid and dark as he watches his fingers slide along the swollen lips of her vagina. Rey’s whimpers catch in her throat.

"Can't get you clean while you're still dripping like this, can we?" His voice is so quiet, almost like he is speaking to himself.

"No," she babbles mindlessly in agreement, “please, Alpha, make me clean – _please_ –”

“So fucking _messy._ ” There is something predatory about the way he’s staring directly into her cunt. “I could lick you all day and you would still be soaking all over my things like this.”

Rey doesn’t know what he wants – if she should deny it, or agree with him, or beg him for more. Thankfully, he doesn’t make her do any of those things before his mouth is back on her again.

It’s like he can’t get enough of her. Rey is dizzy with the high of it, this powerful Alpha worshipping at her feet like she _deserves_ it – as though she is not something to be cast aside. As though she is so much more than a nameless street urchin with no papers, no photo albums, no birthday.

Like she is _his._

He makes a desperate groan against her that seems to vibrate through her entire body – and then he is working her _just_ the way she likes – steady, rhythmic circles with the tip of his tongue, wet and firm and insistent. She rocks against him and _yes god thank god_ he doesn’t stop her, just presses his face further into her sex, nose crushing against her pubic bone. Rey realizes that she adores this man, this Alpha who knows exactly how to please her – and she wants to please him in turn – wants to give him everything, anything he wants – and right now, he seems to really, _really_ want her to (fingers wrapping tight around her aching thighs his tongue his lips are swirling she is throbbing she is his she is) – she’s going to – _she’s going to –_

Rey comes with her back arching from the wall, fingers scrabbling for purchase against the damp wood of the seat. His palms have her legs stretched as wide as they can go. A good thing, she thinks distantly, since they might otherwise be clamped around his head. Holding him there forever.

He might stay there all on his own, she realizes, after a few long, pleasure-drunk moments. When Kylo finally pulls back, he looks… Rey’s breath stutters in her lungs. He looks completely wrecked. Warm color splotches high across his cheekbones. Most of his lower face is smeared with slick. Even his lips, swollen and wet, have turned a delicious candy red.

“That should hold you over.”

She stares at him, uncomprehending. “What?”

“So we can have our shower.” Kylo wipes the back of his hand across his mouth. Something about this gesture makes her _throb_.

“But what about…” Rey’s eyes find the shape of his cock, hard and huge and waiting _._ She licks her lips, thinking about how good it would feel, filling her as far as he can go.

“Don’t worry, little one.” Kylo’s palms engulf her knees as he grasps them, rising to press her back against the wall. “I’m not nearly finished with you yet.”

Rey can't help the little whimper that escapes her. It makes Kylo chuckle darkly as he hovers just above her face.

“You’re very demanding like this, you know.”

“I don’t think I’m the demanding one here," she says, with a note of incredulity.

A predatory smile curls his lips. “Trust me, Omega. When I’m demanding something of you, you will know.”

He rises, leaving her empty and squirming in the grip of fresh arousal. She _wants_ him to demand something of her. She wants him to make her do it _correctly,_ so that she knows she is being good. An obedient Omega. Just for him. How does he always do this to her? Even when she’s not compromised by her hormones, he reduces her to such a base, wanting thing, with only a brush of his lips and a murmured promise.

Kylo is busying himself with a screen on the wall – _what kind of shower has a screen?_ – and then a warm, misting rain fills the center of the stall. Rey blinks up at it in surprise. The showers at the Resistance base were nothing like this. Rey is accustomed to cleaning herself under a thin, weak stream of water, lukewarm and quickly cooling. Nothing like this.

“Come here.”

He’s turned around while she was ogling at the shower, and now he is smirking at her, leaning against the wall. His body is half in the stream, half out. Water drips down his considerable shoulders, the wide expanse of his chest. Down his stomach, flat and tapering.

She swallows.

“Rey.” He folds his arms across his chest. It draws her attention to how large his biceps are. She loves how strong he is, this Alpha. How ferociously he has fought for her.

Rey has risen to her feet without realizing it. Her legs are unsteady and coltish as they carry her across the wet marble. Until she is standing directly before him.

“Here.” With a gentle touch to her elbow, he guides her into the stream.

It is like a soft, spring rain. Except it is much warmer, and it doesn’t have that strange, metallic smell that fills the city air during a storm. Rey tilts her chin back, sighing, and lets it cascade over her. She can practically feel the grime washing off of her – the muck from the river, the soot from the explosions. The blood.

A hand sweeps across her forehead, pushing her hair back. Rey opens her eyes to find Kylo examining her, his expression inscrutable. His thumb sweeps across her temple, where Rey knows she was bleeding earlier.

“Turn around,” he murmurs, “and close your eyes.”

Rey follows his instructions without hesitation. There is a part of her that understands what he wants and is compelled to obey before her mind has even processed what’s happening. For once, she finds she doesn’t care. There is shuffling behind her, and then his fingers are in her hair. Cool, musky liquid trickles down her scalp.

“S’washing off your scent,” Rey says unhappily, though she can’t resist leaning into his touch.

“You got so dirty in all the fighting, sweetheart.” Kylo is practically purring in her ear. “Going to make you nice and clean for me. So that the next time I take you, you won’t smell like anything but your Alpha.”

“Yes.” Her head swims with pleasure. “Nothing else.” She feels so cherished, in this moment. Knowing that he is here, caring for her.

There is another cold drizzle of liquid, down her front this time. Rey sighs and leans back against him. Her Alpha's body is a wall of muscle behind her, holding her weight easily as he begins to wash her. His palms lather soap up and down her ribs, over her breasts. Down her hips. Between her legs.

She whines when he gently guides her away from his body – as well as his erection, so insistent and straining against her lower back. “Patience.” His voice is surprisingly kind. Then she is under the shower again, swallowing her soapy body in heat and water. Stripping her into something fresh and new for him.

His fingers help the process. They massage pleasant circles into her scalp, teasing out the shampoo and detangling the knots that have matted there. Rey thinks she might fall over if it weren’t for his hand on her hip, holding her steady.

“There are other ways, you know.” His voice is lower than before. Tenderly, he lifts her sopping hair from the side of her neck. Exposing her. “We could make it so that you always smell like me. Like us.”

Her gland feels so naked, without her hair clinging to her throat. It shivers in the fine mist around them. She knows exactly what he means. Tingling pleasure crawls up her neck at just the thought of it.

“Wouldn’t you like that, Rey?” His fingers slide along her scalp again. He tilts her head forward, and she feels the hot stream of water hit the back of her head, rinsing through her hair. It hangs in front of her face now, heavy and wet. “It wouldn’t matter if you left. How far you go. You would always be mine.”

Kylo’s voice, always so low, has somehow grown even deeper. As though his words are weighed down by the same dark, buzzing desire that is thickening in Rey’s own lungs. Except for her, it feels like fire. It is molten liquid, pulsing steadily through her veins and carrying with it one single, explicit intention.

“Yes,” Rey whispers. His nose is drifting along the nape of her neck. She feels the wide space between his mouth and her gland, just inches away, like it is charged with electricity. “Yes, Alpha. Yes. Do it. _Please._ Yes, yes, yes, yes, _yes –”_

A low, pained, noise is ripped from Kylo’s chest. Without any warning, he whirls her around, nearly lifts her off the floor and crushes her in a brutal kiss.

Rey cries out against him, but not in pleasure. His mouth is supposed to be on her throat, not her lips. He is supposed to kissing her gland, which is now _blazing_ beneath her ear, a bright red coal lodged deep in her skin. Her back collides with a wet smack against the tile, and Kylo is hoisting her hips up the wall, hands gripping her thighs.

 _“No,”_ she whines, winding her fingers through his hair. Tries to guide him to her neck. Kylo actually _g_ _rowls,_ and his teeth sink hard into her lip. The pain is sharp and almost as delicious as the throb of his arousal, rutting against her clit. Rey struggles against him until she tastes iron on her tongue.

It is not enough. Rey is panting, delirious, fingernails digging into his shoulders. But Kylo is deliberately ignoring what he _knows_ she wants him to do. She knows he knows, because god _damnit_ , he wants it too. He wants it so badly that his hands are shaking as they adjust her legs around his waist, as they bring his cock to her wetness.

One long, groaning thrust, and he is suddenly _there_. Filling her.

Little bit little, the desperate pain clawing at her ribcage begins to ease.

“Not like this.” His trembling fingers pet her face, and she realizes that she is crying. Large, fat tears of frustration roll down her cheeks and gather at the tip of her nose, the corners of her mouth. “I can't.”

“But _Alpha,”_ Rey sobs. Her head makes a sharp noise as she smacks it back against the wall, the agony of his denial wracking her entire body. And then Kylo’s palm is engulfing her throat, pressing to her windpipe. His thumb – it _digs_ into her gland, the biting sharp press of his nail making her eyes go wide with shock.

And… it helps. It actually helps. Rey takes a shuddering, thin breath against the press of his palm, and he begins to thrust into her.

“I will have you, Rey.” He hisses the word into her ear, pressing her into the wall with his hips, pistoning into her body – with his grip, tight around her neck. “I will mate you – I will _own_ you – and you will give it all to me, sweetheart – you will _beg_ that I make you bleed for me. But not like this.”

“But – please,” she gasps, “I need it _now,_ Alpha – I need it I need it I _need it –”_

“I _know_ what you need,” he says, pressing his forehead viciously against hers. “But right now, you’ll have to settle for this.”

He begins to drive into her so hard that any breath she still has is stolen by the brutality of his pace. He doesn’t allow her to look away – doesn’t tear his eyes away from hers as they chase one another toward climax, gasping panting tumbling headfirst into blinding pleasure. His eyes rove hungrily over her face as she shudders and writhes against him, her walls clenching convulsively – until he gives a ragged gasp and follows her over the edge.

The thick stretch of his knot within her is like a break in the clouds. Kylo releases her throat, and Rey sucks in great gulps of air. She shivers as he wraps her in the circle of his arms, pulling her tight to his body.

"I know," he murmurs. "I know."

He continues to hold her this way as he turns them around, sliding down the tile wall until he is seated on the floor. The shower is still running behind her. He doesn’t seem to care. He is still whispering into her hair, nonsensical, broken words. "Not like that," he repeats, over and over. "I won't do that to you. Not like that."

Rey trembles in his lap, her body hot and sore even in its relief. She tilts her head up to peer at him. In her lucidity, she is struck by how devastated he looks, having denied his Omega. She is sure her heart might break if it didn’t already belong to him so completely.

"I shouldn't have done that," she tells him softly, after a long moment passes. "I… I don’t know what came over me.”

For the first time since he slammed her against the wall, Kylo looks away. “You are in heat.”

“It makes it…” Rey squeezes her eyes shut against another shudder. “Hard for me to think, sometimes.”

Kylo is staring at her, when she opens them again. “I know.”

“Is it always this way?” The words are little more than a whisper. “Does it get any worse?”

His throat bobs as he swallows. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean?” Rey’s brow creases with confusion. “Haven’t you… weren’t there…” She remembers Kylo telling her in explicit detail what this week would be like. The memory is enough to make her cheeks warm. “Other Omegas? That you’ve done this with?”

Kylo frowns deeply at her. “No.” His hand smoothes across her forehead, pushing back her shower-damp hair. "You are the only Omega who has –who has ever made me feel such…” He trails off, some unknown emotion in his eyes.

Rey can’t stand not kissing him anymore, so she does. His mouth, still swollen from before, is soft and pliant against her lips.

“I know,” she whispers, terrified. Because she does. She understands exactly what he means. And perhaps that is why she buries her head in his shoulder, or why she cannot bring herself to look at him again for several minutes afterward. Because maybe – in spite of everything – maybe she doesn’t want there to be any others. For either of them.

Even in this brief moment of clarity, she still longs to bare her throat and beg him to sink his teeth into her gland.

And that realization is somehow more terrifying to her than anything else they’ve been through together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys aren't bored of my weird rambling smut scenes yet, because I am clearly incapable of keeping this short and sweet 😬Follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/ohwise1ne) to listen to me cry about this story.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since our last update, I was gifted this incredible piece of [fanart](https://twitter.com/ohwise1ne/status/1098053836021907463) for this story from beniciHOE. Please come ogle at it with me because it's so beautiful and no one has ever done something like this for me before 😭

Sunlight pours through every window as Ben stretches. Waking.

He rolls over on the mattress, seeking her warmth. He doesn’t find it. The room is empty – but it is also so full. The smell of her permeates every part of it. The smell of _them._ Ben breathes it in deeply.

He can’t remember the last time he felt this way. This feeling… it is the softness of his mother’s hand, cupping his cheek. It is the warmth of sunlight soaking through to his bones, grass whispering in his ear while he grins and grins.

It is peace.

She will be outside already. She doesn’t like to stay indoors for too long. Ben thinks she starts to feel a little trapped after a while, with four walls around her. She is accustomed to the open air, his wild girl. After so many years wading through the smog of the Capital, she cherishes every moment she can steal under the clear blue sky, in a world without locks or doors.

As he walks out of the bedroom, Ben remembers when this place was empty in a different way. When he stripped the walls and the furniture, so that it was more of a skeleton than a home. And another time – his stomach goes cold at the memory – when he returned and only the ghost of her remained. The emptiness had spread all the way inside him, that time. Bled right through his skin and filled him until there was nothing left but the hole she had cut out of him.

But those moments belong to a different person. A different lifetime.

Ben walks out into the late morning. The path to the lake is thick and green with summer grass. Rey has taught him to enjoy the way it feels against his bare feet, tickling between his toes. She refuses to wear shoes. Ben is all right with this. He has come to love the summer, because most of the time, Rey refuses to wear anything at all.

He finds her at the edge of the trees, cross-legged in the shade. Her hair is longer than when they first met, brushing along the bottoms of her shoulder blades. It’s taken on a glow, lately, from the many hours she spends in the sun – along with her skin, which has turned golden and freckled with summer. He didn’t know she had so many freckles, hiding beneath her paleness. He spends each night discovering the new ones that have been coaxed out by her daytime adventures, committing their shape and size and taste to his memory.

It’s warm. So warm. His girl loves the warmth. He wants to join her, but — something is holding him back. He realizes he is frozen in place, teetering on the edge of something important. Unable to reach her.

“Rey,” he tries to say, but her name does not come out. He is paralyzed. Watching. She is just a few feet away, he knows, but it suddenly seems a much greater distance. Like an entire canyon has split open the ground between them, and Ben doesn’t know how to leap across and reach her.

“Rey.” His voice still isn’t cooperating. He needs to see her face. _“Rey,”_ he says again, and hears nothing but the hum of crickets, the gentle tide of the lake. She does not turn to face him.

_“Rey –”_

The world around him cracks, a fast-running fissure down the middle – and then splits straight open. Darkness rushes toward him, swallowing Rey – _“Rey!”_ – the lake, the trees, the grass, and Rey –  _Rey_ –

It is night. A different bed. A few long, breathless moments pass before Ben realizes where he is. What he is supposed to be doing. He flips over in the dark, groping blindly for her. Panic rushes through him - then crashes abruptly against a wall when his fingers meet the softness of her hair.

“Rey.” He says her name, because he can. Because she’s here. Turning over, now, to look at him. Even in the dark, he can see how pink her cheeks are. And when her eyes find his, they look - a little crazed. A little relieved, maybe, too. Like she had been having a nightmare of her own.

A strained, reedy sound is pulled from her lungs. "Ben." She twists in the sheets, reaching for him. Her voice is so small. "Ben, please. I - I need it again."

“What?” He leans up on one elbow, instantly alert. “What do you need?”

Rey's fingers find his hair, pulling him toward her. The inside of her mouth is like fire. Ben groans into her kiss. “Inside me,” she gasps. “Please.”

He will never get over it — the way she asks, so sweetly, for him to fuck her. With one fluid motion, he rolls atop her. Caging her into the mattress. It strikes up something primal and protective in him, the way he can completely cover her body like this. Like he has been constructed just to shelter her, closing her off from the outside world – keeping her safe and near and all for him.

"Anything," he whispers, as her whines begin to raise in pitch. "I've got you."

She is a sticky mess. The small, squelching sound her thighs make as they part — it is obscene. Vulgar, even.

He has never loved anything so much in his life.

* * *

When Ben first presented as an Alpha, he clearly remembers sitting at his mother’s kitchen table. Pamphlets were spread across the glass surface in the shape of a rising sun. Carefully arranged. Controlled. Just the way she liked it.

From that point forward, the leaflets explained, his objective in life would be to find his Omega. Everything else would fade into the background until he accomplished this singular, all-important goal. Ben remembers tracing his fingers over the colorful photographs of smiling couples. They had been cheerful. Affectionate. Utterly unrecognizable from his own Alpha mother and Omega father, whom Ben never saw gazing at one another with the kind of repulsive sentiment on full display in those brochures.

He decided that day that he would never take an Omega. Partly for the way his mother’s face fell – even then, he enjoyed doing everything he could to disappoint her expectations. But also because the thought disgusted him.

His revulsion to the idea followed him well into adulthood. Of course, he eventually came to understand the benefit of a quick lay, if only to take the edge off his ruts – but never with an Omega.

And especially never with an Omega in heat.

He's always been vaguely nauseated by the idea of heats. Something about the thought of two people driven out of their minds to fuck like wild animals for days on end – swimming in their own fluids – it never did anything for him. Ben watched his Alpha peers ogle over holovids of sticky thighs and women near-delirious with fever, and he was never able to conjure up anything more than a slightly revolted fascination with the whole process.

That was before he met Rey.

At the height of her heat, Rey is unlike anything he’s ever known. It’s been that way for the entirety of this thing between them — one long, tumbling rush of escalating emotion. But Rey in her heat is something else completely. It makes him feel ways he never even knew he was capable of.

Rey in her heat is — transcendent. An out-of-body experience. His sheets are utterly devastated by the end of the first day — or is it the second? Time always gets so slippery whenever he is with her, but it is especially so now, with his world contracted to the ghost of her breath, the sharp bite of her fingernails, the fiery pressure of her body that squeezes his knot like it wants to grip him there forever.

They are ruined, his sheets. He should offer to change them. Throw them in the garbage, even — they'll be unusable after this.

Ben wants to roll around in them forever.

Even before her heat, Rey brought him to a new and vivid appreciation of what it could be like, between an Alpha and his Omega. It had been a little terrifying at first, when he began to understand what she meant to him. It only became more terrifying once he began learning the little details of her. The crease that crinkles her brow whenever she's puzzling something out. The way she folds her legs underneath her when she sits. The training exercises she does without fail every morning. Her horrifying habit of chewing with her mouth open.

All the stars that make up her tiny, perfect constellation in his sky.

The most terrifying moment of all, of course, had been his realization of how deeply he was falling in love with her.

But the terror of it has been far exceeded by something significantly more compelling. Like a shift in his basic biology, all the way down to the structure of his cells.

When Rey came into his life, he understood for the first time what it meant to have an Omega.

But seeing her through her heat — Ben finally understands what it means to be an Alpha too.

* * *

Small cubes of ice tinkle in the ceramic bowl as Ben reaches for another piece.

"Alpha..." Rey is sprawled out on her back across his mattress in a state of freshly fucked bliss. Ben runs a soothing hand through her hair.

_"Shhh."_

He selects another cube at random and brings it to his face for inspection. Her lips part with a moan.

"So hot," she whispers.

"I know, sweetheart." Ben props himself on one elbow so he can drink in her face as he brings her relief. "I'm here."

At the first touch of the ice, she gives a tiny gasp. Ben coos and murmurs at her in response. He drags a chilly path from her collarbone down to her breasts. Her nipples are already so puckered and tight from several rounds of similar torture, but Rey leans into his touch all the same, arching.

"You like that?" He draws wide, lazy circles around her nipple, slowly closing inward.

"Ahhhh — oh, _god_ — Kylo —"

"You do." Water trickles from the trail he leaves, pooling in the slope between her breasts. "My poor girl is feeling so _hot,_ isn't she?"

 _"Yessss."_ The word comes out as a hiss. "But that feels — it's so —"

"I know." The ice is rapidly melting as he runs it across her nipple. She jerks at the movement, gasping.

"Alpha. Please. Again."

Ben _throbs_ at the opportunity to be inside her wetness, so soon after he's already finished with her. "So greedy." He gives her nipple a punishing flick, yanking a wet, gasping sound from her throat. "We need to cool you down first."

The next ice cube he places directly on his tongue. Holding her gaze fast, he lowers his mouth to her bosom to follow the path left by his fingers.

Rey is moaning incoherently by the time his lips close around her, hand cupping her breast so that he can lap and tease her with the ice between his teeth. She is like ice cream, sweet and sticky and melting in his mouth. Ben wants to swallow every inch of her.

"Kylo," she whimpers, thrashing. "Kylo, oh Kylo, please please _please —"_

He releases her with an obscene _pop._ "Turn over."

Rey lifts her pink little face from the pillow, wide-eyed and confused. _Fuck,_ if she isn't the most adorable thing he's ever seen. Ben leans forward so that he can kiss her deeply. He slips whatever's left of the ice onto her tongue, and she gives him the sweetest little whimper in return. When he pulls away, his voice is gentler this time.

"On your stomach, little one."

She scrambles to obey. It makes his insides squirm with hot pleasure, how easily she complies to his demands now. How good she wants to be for him.

He rewards her with a fresh cube of ice, pulling a long whine from her sweet lips as he trails it slowly down her spine. "Good girl," he murmurs, his palm flat on her back. Pinning her. "My lovely little Omega."

"Please," she gasps into her pillow. "Kylo, please, I need you to at least — at least touch me — it's so _hot_ —"

He thinks he can't get any harder, and then she starts begging him like that. Ben breathes out unsteadily against the nape of her neck. Air wafts against the rosy-red skin beneath her ear. For one delirious moment, Ben considers putting his lips to the delicate flesh there — testing the give and taste of it with his teeth.

He growls with frustration and numbs his tongue with another piece of ice instead.

She is dripping down her thighs again, by the time Ben reaches the base of her spine. He slides his palms along her ass and groans again at the way they completely cover her. Tightens his fingers and watches them dig into her flushed skin.

 _"Ben —"_ She is nearly sobbing now. His poor girl.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart. You just sound so lovely when you're begging me like that. Does it make me a bad Alpha? That I like to hear you beg?"

"No." She turns her head so she can fix her wild gaze on him. "Never. You — you know what I need, Alpha. When I need it."

An intoxicating surge of triumph. "Very good, Rey." He spreads her wide and then lets the ice fall off his tongue, watching raptly at the trail of water it leaves as it trickles between her cheeks. Rey _keens._

"I'm so weak for you," he tells her roughly, kissing her lower back. "I can't help myself. I love to hear you get so desperate for my knot."

"I am," she whines, "I'm desperate, Ben, please, just — just give it to me —"

Ben may be a bad Alpha sometimes. Even a cruel one. But he will not deny her this.

He hoists her hips into the air and with a long, toe-curling thrust, he gives in.

* * *

There are moments, in between.

Tender moments, where she touches his face and stares up at him like — like he is a better person than this man he's become. Moments soft with her giggles, a sound that will never stop cleaving his heart straight in half — that pushes him to go to ridiculous lengths to prolong the laughter that bubbles out of her smiling mouth.

There are moments where she offers him her throat, her eyes squeezed shut, and Ben — Ben can hardly stop himself. He doesn't know where all this self control has come from, or when he became so damn honorable. He spends whole hours dreaming of how her skin would give beneath his teeth, should he just lower his mouth those scant few inches and _bite._

And _fuck_ , does he want to bite her. He wants to fucking _own_ her.

Those moments often devolve into something a bit darker. A bit more punishing. She arches into the bruises he leaves on her skin, and Ben has to tamp down the fierce desire to mark every part of her. He wants to make it _hurt_ a little. As if it is her fault that he can't take her — but in a way, it is. If she hadn't left — if she had _simply stayed_ — perhaps they would be mated already. Perhaps they would be curled up in the nest she made at their cabin, and Ben might be making love to her instead of this hair-pulling, teeth-scraping, whining affair with pinches and purpling kisses scattered across her skin.

But his lovely Rey doesn't seem to mind.

She opens herself up to him, offering every bit he wants to take. And Ben's appetite... it is quite endless, when it comes to his Omega.

He fears he will lose himself in her. They are, the two of them, a gluttonous cycle of giving and taking and giving some more, and the entire time Ben finds himself tumbling headfirst into the blinding light of her.

She will ruin him, this girl. This woman of fire and fury and ferocity unmatched.

Ben will gladly let her.

* * *

It is a blessing and a curse, each time his knot finally loosens from her.

It's a blessing, because it means he is finally free to fuck her again. And by the time his knot is finally finished emptying itself inside her — Rey is certainly in the mood to be fucked.

But it's equally a curse, because as soon as it deflates enough for him to pull out — that means his spend starts trickling out of her, without his knot there to trap it inside.

Ben doesn't like that at all.

He finds himself, during one of these torturous moments, kneeling behind her perky bottom as soon as he slips out of her. Rey lets out little sighs and whimpers as he dips his fingers between her legs, plugging her with them instead.

"Ben," she moans into the pillow. Her face is still so red. How many days has it been now? Three? Four? Ben can't keep track. He has no reference for how long this is supposed to last, only that he hopes it's never-ending.

"I know." His fingers are a mess of fluids. Hers and his. Ben can't imagine either existing without the other. "Just a minute longer."

"But — but Ben —"

"Shhhh. There's still some back here you need to take." He pushes his fingers into her swollen little cunt. "You're going to be good and take the whole thing for me this time. Aren't you?"

"Yes, I'm trying," she warbles, "but — but can't we just — do it again?"

"You're going to take all of me first. Like a good Omega."

Her hole clenches, so empty and wanting. His semen is dripping out of her faster than he can gather it. It's an impossible task. But Ben's stomach twists with something hot and possessive at the thought of any part of him leaving her.

"Every... last... bit."

Rey makes a pathetic sound and lifts her hips higher in the air. Ben's not sure if she's trying to entice him into fucking her again, or to give him better access for this ridiculous task.

He hasn't asked her yet, if she has an implant. A bitter part of him is certain that she must — but Ben can't think about that right now, with his Omega so ripe and lovely and ready in her heat. Opening her body for him, again and again. He is possessed with an almost suffocating desire to fill her with his seed, seeing her like this. It's irrational. Not even a possibility, given where their lives are at right now.

It's an irresistible impulse, impossible for him to refuse.

Rey buries her face in her pillow as he pushes his seed back inside her, and Ben knows there is no limit with this girl. That he will just keep taking, like a man starved, until there is nothing left of her.

Or perhaps — there is nothing left of him.

* * *

She doesn't want to eat. She doesn't want anything but his knot, swelling and pulsing while he pants in her hair. But Ben is trying — he is trying _so hard,_ to be a good Alpha. To take care of her.

So when her stomach starts growling, he scoops her into his arms and ignores her whimpering protests as he carries her to his kitchen.

This is, perhaps, how they end up fucking on his kitchen counter. Or perhaps it's the way her eyes grew so heavy and dark as he slips a piece of watermelon into her mouth, her tongue lapping around his fingers like a greedy kitten.

"You need to eat," he rasps into her neck, even as he arranges her pliant body on the granite surface. "There isn't time for this right now."

Rey's lips part with a wanting sound, her eyes darting up and down his face. "I can eat after, Alpha. _Please.”_

"You need to eat _now_ ," he hisses, then holds her hips still as he enters her in one swift thrust. Rey cries out. "Good Omegas aren't so _tempting_ when their Alphas try to feed them."

"I'm sorry," she whines. Her hands are grasping at the counter, knocking into the toaster, scattering a flurry of receipts. "I'll be better — I swear — I just — I just need —"

Ben knows. Because he needs it too.

It's not sanitary, the mess they make in his kitchen. But Ben gets on his knees and licks her clean afterward like she is the most delicious meal he's ever had.

* * *

It's been five days, the first time that he wakes up alone.

Ben has never been in a coma, but he wonders if this is what it feels like to climb out of one — delirious, hazy and a little lost. Especially so without the radiant heat of her body, a small hot flame curled into his own.

Distantly, he hears water running. She is showering. The realization is like a heavy slap across the face. Just a few hours ago, he had held her to his chest while she sobbed and rocked against him as he promised her. Over and over. As he told her how deeply he was lost for her.

"I know," she'd kept saying, voice wet with tears. "I know."

Had she really been in such a great hurry to rid herself of his scent?

Ben stumbles out of bed. His sheets are utterly wrecked. He considers stripping his bed right now, burning them in the yard — a dramatic act of revenge for her rush to clean herself.

In the end, Ben cannot bring himself to even shuck off a pillowcase. She has made him very weak indeed, his little rebel.

The bathroom is filled with steam, when he pushes past the door. He walks across the tile, shameless in his nudity. When his eyes find the shape of her, standing beneath the stream, he finds all the anger rush out of him.

He can't imagine feeling anything but love for this beautiful, brilliant creature. His Rey.

"Kylo."

She has noticed him. She looks more lucid than Ben has seen her in days. With sure step, she crosses the shower to reach him — and then falters.

"Hey." Her thumb brushes across his cheek. Ben squeezes his eyes shut. "What's wrong?"

She pulls him into her arms, breasts soft and smooth against his chest. Ben breathes in her hair — _his shampoo, at least it's his shampoo_ — and lets out a shuddering sigh.

"I'm not ready." He's not sure where the words come from — Ben certainly has not allowed his mind to travel down the path of what he's not ready for. He's not even sure if she hears them, for how softly he whispers them against her forehead.

Her fingers push his hair out of his face, and Ben is utterly naked before her.

"You don't have to be," she murmurs. "Not just yet."

Rey leads him into the water, and this time, she washes his hair instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience with this update friends. I've been dealing with some pretty serious health issues lately, and I'm glad to be back writing again. I appreciate all your messages of support. You guys give me such purpose. 
> 
> I also have been working on a few other ficlets -- a Valentine's day gift called the [Cat Whisperer](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17776319/chapters/41944358), and a collection of smutty office rival drabbles called [Very Nearly](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17861291/chapters/42150047) \-- as well as beta'ing KTF's stunning new abo, [Imprints](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17919194/chapters/42309065), which I can't recommend highly enough. Definitely jump on that if you haven't already.


	17. Chapter 17

Ben wakes to the smell of food.

It is an experience he believed he'd left in his childhood, before his parents sent him away. On the rare occasion that his mother was home on the weekend, he might awaken with the scent of bacon and syrup in his nostrils, the distant sound of Leia Organa's voice arguing with some senator floating into his bedroom.

Before the riots. Before the First Order.

Before Snoke.

Now, his mother is dead. And there is the scent of an Omega mixing with the sizzling egg— the scent of summer and fresh rain and heartbreak.

Because if there is anything left of his heart after leading his own parents to their deaths, Ben knows this girl is going to shatter whatever splintered pieces still remain.

He finds her stooped over the stove in his kitchen, frowning at a pan that spits and hisses with bacon fat. She looks so small with his shirt fluttering around her knees—and equally out of place in the all-black kitchen.

Rey is so deep in concentration that she does not notice him until his arms are sliding around her, pulling her back against his chest. She gives a delightful little jump, a small noise of surprise leaving her lips.

"You're cooking." Ben nuzzles his face into her hair, breathing her in. It falls around her shoulders. Loose. The way he likes it.

Rey leans back against him. "I'm making breakfast."

"You don't know how to cook."

A soft laugh. "That's not very nice."

"You're doing a good job of it, Omega."

She has started to melt against him now, head lolling back against his shoulder. He likes this. Supporting her. He slides his hand down her bare arm, curling around the spatula that she's holding.

"You need to stir it a little more. Or else it will start to burn."

She is trying to pay attention, but Ben can see that it's a challenge, with his body all around her. He doesn't mind. He would like to rearrange her entire world so that she needs to do nothing but lean against him.

Rey's eyes flutter shut. "I wanted to cook for you." She looks so blissful, chin tilted up toward his face. "You've taken such good care of me, Alpha. I wanted to return the favor."

"There will be time for that later." He kisses her temple. "I like taking care of you, little one."

He is starting to get aroused again, with his heat-fresh Omega pressed against him just so. He is very aware that she is wearing nothing under his shirt — that he would need only to hike up the cotton to find her already so wet for him. He wonders if the mere thought of her naked body will ever stop enchanting him so.

"The heat is set too high." His hand slips to the knob, and the flame flickers as it dies down beneath the pan. "Too much heat, and it'll start to burn."

Rey presses flush against him, sighing. The pan crackles and hisses as Ben moves the bacon around. His hand engulfs her smaller one around the spatula. Covering her.

"Smells good," she mumbles.

“It does.” Ben nuzzles into her hair. “Are you hungry?”

“Mmm.” Rey lolls her head backward, breathing him in. “Yes.”

“You haven’t been eating enough.”

She smiles, eyes still closed. “We’ve been a bit busy.”

“It’s good that you have an appetite again.”

A knot forms in his stomach before he’s even finished speaking. Because her appetite also means something else.

They fall silent after that. Ben turns the bacon in the pan and tries to keep his focus on her small body, cradled in his arms—but his fearful thoughts are beginning to crowd out everything else. Her hunger is an indication that this is all about to end. At this point, her heat is but a wisp of smoke on the air, rapidly thinning all around them. He clutches to her tighter.

“Kylo...” she begins haltingly.

 _Kylo._ Not _Alpha._ Not even _Ben._

He swallows thickly. “Not now.”

“But—”

“Not yet.” His grip tightens around her. He closes his eyes and tries to make his voice soft. “Please, Rey.”

She tips her head back so she can press her lips to his jaw. “All right.”

They don’t speak as they prepare the rest of their breakfast. Ben adds cheese to the eggs and fills a bowl with chopped fruit. She loves fruit, his girl. He will never forget the look on her face, the first time he fed her honey. There is so much that her life has denied her. So much he still has left to give.

Rey was not lying about her appetite. She is nearly ravenous, devouring her first true meal in days—two plates of eggs, most of the bacon and all of the fruit Ben has chopped for her. He is hungry too, of course, but for now, he is content to watch her eat.

He would be content to watch her do anything, so long as it means she remains by his side.

It is cold and raining today. There is a window above his kitchen sink, and as he scrubs the dishes, Ben watches the water run parallel to its surface. The rain turns the glass into a kaleidoscope of droplets, distorting the outside world.

He wonders where they will go. They cannot stay here forever. Snoke has not forgotten— he will still want Ben to deliver her, especially with the stench of her heat clinging to him like a cloud. His master will immediately recognize the threat she represents to Ben’s loyalty. He would try to take her away.

Ben will cut down a hundred more men before he is separated from her again.

There is the cabin, though that still seems too near to Snoke’s grasp. There are the free communities beyond the Deadlands and far to the south, if they can travel so far. Could they really find a life away from all of this? After everything Ben has sacrificed?

He looks down at his soapy hands and ponders how deeply this Omega has changed him.

When he finally shuts off the faucet, he finds her still licking strawberry juice from her fingers—and his phone in her hand.

He freezes. “What are you doing?”

Rey looks up at him, surprised. Her expression is far too relaxed for the panic he feels rising in his chest.

“I’m connecting to the channel.” She holds up his phone. As if it should be obvious. “I told them I’d reach out a lot sooner than this. They’re probably very concerned.”

Ben takes a very slow, very deep breath. It doesn’t help. “Why?”

“Well… it’s been six days. And they haven’t heard a word from me. I’m sure that they’ve been very—“

_“Why are you reaching out to them?”_

A heavy silence falls over the room. There is only the sound of the rain, pattering against the glass.

“Because they’re my friends,” she says at last. “Because we’re at _war._ Or have you forgotten?”

“I haven’t forgotten.” He tries to keep his voice calm, because this is all spiraling too deep, too fast— but it’s hard. It’s hard, because his Omega is sitting right there. She is sitting there, and she is holding his phone, she is talking about some imaginary war and she is reaching out to speak to— “The war is finished, Rey. It’s over. The Resistance is done.”

This was clearly the wrong thing to say. Rey flies to her feet, chair clattering across the tile. “It’s not over,” she says hotly. “It will never be over, so long as that totalitarian _tyrant_ is still ruling over the Capital.”

“Rey.” His voice cracks on her name, a desperate sound. He crosses the room and hates how she stumbles backward, the fear that flashes across her face. “Sweetheart. Please. I need you to listen.”

“You’re the one who’s not listening,” she snaps. “You haven’t been listening this entire time. You still aren’t listening about the war, or the Knights, or about—” her voice breaks, eyes shining, “about your own mother _,_ or what any of this has meant to me— even after everything we’ve been through, you still won’t _hear_ me.”

Ben clasps both of her wrists in one hand, holding them. Holding her. He keeps her gaze for a long moment. Everything is too fast— his heart, his breath, his thoughts. He can’t pin any of it down. “You can’t. You can’t do this.”

“I thought we were past this,” Rey says, voice shaking. “You trapping me places I don’t want to be.”

“I’m not _trapping_ you.” Around him, the kitchen begins to sway. How could she say such a thing? She had come here herself. Willingly. She’d been the one to return to _him._ “I only thought—I thought—“ He can’t breathe. Her face is starting to blur, as though she’s already on the opposite side of that rainy window. “I thought you wanted to be with me.”

He’s crying, he realizes. Fat, shameful tears are rolling down his cheeks, but he can’t stop them. He simply cannot comprehend what she’s telling him. What this means. He sees his visions of their new life together, of leaving all this behind, coming apart like smoke on the air. Vanishing.

“I do.” She slips out of his grasp easily, but only so that she can reach up and touch his face. Her voice has become gentler, at the sight of his distress. “Of course I do. I’m here, aren’t I?”

Her face looks so earnest, so lovely, that Ben cannot possibly bear to imagine what she’s suggesting. “But you still mean to leave.”

She closes her eyes tight for a moment. It would satisfy him, how painful this question is, if he weren’t so terrified of her answer. “There is still... something I have to do. That only _I_ can do.” Her hands slide up his jaw, grasping his face. “You must understand that.”

He can’t understand that. He can’t understand any of this. His mind simply refuses to register how he was nuzzling his lovely Omega by the stove a few minutes ago, making breakfast— and now she is talking about… about…

“You can’t leave.” The words are ragged with his pain. “Please, Rey. Please. Not again. If you leave…” His hands begin to shake. “The Supreme Leader is more dangerous than you can possibly imagine. He will find you, he will _hurt_ you, and I—I will be unable to protect you. You can’t.”

And Rey—she is crying too now. But she isn’t yielding to him. She isn’t doing anything at all except standing there, eyes wet. Silent.

“I’ll do anything," Ben tells her desperately, changing tact. "We can go anywhere. Anywhere at all. Tell me what you want, and I’ll give it to you, Rey. Anything. But you can't make me let you go again. You can't."

"I’m not asking for that,” she says—but then why is she crying? Why is she still looking at him like she's breaking his heart?

“Let me go with you then.” Ben grasps her arms, heart pounding. “Whatever it is you need to do. I can help.”

“You can’t."

"I have to."

"You _can't."_

The sound that comes out of him is something like a roar. Before he realizes what he's doing, he has her up against the wall, hands wrapped around her shoulders. Rey thrashes in his arms, fear pouring off her body, but Ben just holds her there. Snarling. Every ounce of his being demands that he _tame_ her. That he force his Omega to recognize his authority and bend to his will. That he _keep her with him._

Slowly, the red fog starts to fade. He is left only with his own heavy breathing, loud in his ears, and his lovely girl. Wide-eyed and frightened.

Because of him.

No, Ben thinks. Not again. He won't do this to her again.

He releases her all at once. Still breathing hard, he watches as she shrinks against the wall. Catching her own breath.

It is the most painful thing he's ever done.

"I won't make you stay,” he tells her. Against every instinct he has, he tells her.

Rey is rubbing her shoulder where he gripped her, but her face… it’s softer than he expected. Sadder. "I know.” Her lip trembles as she stares at him. "I know, Ben. I trust you."

So he leans down and kisses her sweet trembling lip. He kisses her until all the tension has melted from her body. Until she is, for just one more moment, soft and pliant beneath his mouth.

When she breaks away, her fingers are in his hair. "You’ve got to trust me too.”

Ben has never trusted anyone in his life. Trust has always been a weakness. A mistake. Something other people can use to break you when you least expect it. Ben swore a long time ago he would never trust another soul again.

He looks down at his fierce and lovely Omega, naked but for his shirt, eyes shining and hair a little wild and her lips tasting like eggs and strawberries.

"I trust you,” he tells her.

"Then..." Rey reaches for his face, but at the last moment, her fingers slide down his throat. To the spot on his neck that has been so enraptured with her from that very first day. "Then I'm ready."

Ben suddenly can't find his breath. Not with her fingertips trailing over such sensitive skin. Not with her suggestion hanging in the air that she—that they— "You can't mean that."

"I do." She looks up at him with such wide, trusting eyes. "I've never meant anything more."

"Rey..."

"Alpha." She leans into him, pressing their bodies together. "You said it yourself. We would always find each other this way. No matter how far apart."

It’s true, of course. He knows it’s true. There would be no more running if they did this. They would be connected at all times. He would never need to chase after her again.

“Please,” she whispers.

It is impossible to think. Exhaling unsteadily, Ben squeezes shuts his eyes. His whole body is tight, every muscle perfectly still. If he starts moving, he knows… he will be unable to stop. There will be nothing else for him to do but pin her to his kitchen counter and accept her offering.

His voice is very hoarse as he pleads with her.

“Don’t do this, Rey. Just because you—because you want to leave. Just to make it easier.”

She is touching his closed eyelids now. Feather-soft, her small fingertips trace their lines and chase away the tension there. “I want this.”

Ben _whines._

“Don’t you want this, Alpha?”

“I—I do.” _He does._ _Of course he does._ “But I could not live with myself, Rey, if you were to regret—”

She silences him with her fingers, running softly over her lips. “I understand it now. What this is. What it means." He can feel the way her scent spikes and swirls in the air, giving him these words. “This is the way we belong to each other.”

It is the first time she has said such a thing without his prompting. It makes Ben’s entire body come alive, opening up to her. To _this._

“I understand now,” Rey says again, very close to his gland this time. “I know what we have to do.”

And he is still devastated—still utterly ruined by this perfect, impossible girl. But he is also near-giddy with joy, hearing her say this. The totality of what she is offering him. He feels paralyzed with emotion—with shock and agony and delirious elation, and how is it possible to feel so much at once? His head swims with a thousand feelings as she winds her arms around his neck, pulling him to her mouth.

"Please," she says, the word soft and sweet against his lips.

Kissing her is the easiest thing he’s ever done. Just like everything else with this Omega. From the very first time, her mouth against his has stilled the chaos churning constantly inside him—and this is no different. It has been like this with her all along.

 _”Please,_ Alpha.” She releases him so that she can lift her hair from her _—fuck,_ her _gland—_ and she is already moaning just at the thought of it. Just at the simple act of raising her hair from her throat and exposing herself to him.

This must be what flying feels like. Ben is sure he has never experienced such joy as he does in this moment—even with his wet face. His broken heart. He scoops her into his arms in one smooth motion.

“Everything.” He can’t stop kissing her face. His lips move across every bit of her available to him. “My mate will have everything. The entire world.”

Her scent is climbing all around him, sweet and thick and ready for him. He will smell like this always, he realizes. He will carry her in his heart and his body, everywhere he goes. His sweet Omega. His girl.

“Just you,” Rey gasps out. “I only need you.”

She has him. She _owns_ him. Ben tucks her close to his chest and carries her through his home— _their_ home—because everything that he is belongs to her. Rey won’t stop kissing his throat, and Ben lets her, even pauses for a moment by the stairs to put his hungry mouth to hers. He can’t go near her gland. He’s afraid he’ll bite her right here on the stairs, like an animal—and he needs to do this slowly.

He needs to make this last as long as possible. To savor her before she leaves him again.

Her breath is coming quickly by the time they reach his bedroom. Ben deposits her on the ruined sheets. She is—magnificent. Flushed and needy and perfect in the gray morning light. Rey tears off her shirt while he works on his pants, and Ben almost comes at just the sight of her—pink and naked and trembling in her need for him.

For her Alpha.

“Mine,” he says softly, unable to help himself. “My girl.” His touches her face, and she leans into it, eyelashes fluttering. He loves the way her lips part, when she’s looking at him. When she’s ready for his pleasure.

Rey is wet already. He can smell it, thick and intoxicating on the air. Almost as wet as she was during her heat.  
  
She is not in heat anymore, but she still needs him. Her breath is starting to catch, tiny, urgent noises. Ben knows all of her noises, all her shudders and sighs. He finds he wants to make her keen.   
  
He wants to do everything in the world with her.

Rey reaches for him, and he cannot keep away from her any longer.

"I've got you," he says, as he has told her so often this week. "I'm here."  
  
She won't be here, very soon. She will leave him.

But Ben won't let such thoughts poison this moment. He has imagined this far too long and often for that.  
  
It still stuns him each time, how beautiful she is when he first touches her. How soft her skin feels beneath his hands. The way she welcomes him, arching. Pressing. Opening. As he crawls up her body, Ben takes a long moment to drink her in. He is reminded of the wonder he felt that very first night, this girl spread out like the sweetest gift across his bed.

Even then, Ben could not believe how lovely she was. How incredible she smelled.  
  
At the time, he was sure he had been dreaming.   
  
He won't need to wonder if she's real when she leaves this time. He will feel her wherever he goes. She will be truly, completely his, in a way he never understood he needed. His. _His._

“Alpha.” Rey is starting to squirm beneath him. Wanting. It takes everything Ben has not to dip down and _bite._

“Not yet.”

He trails his fingers along her jaw, tilting her chin up to him.

“I am going to lick you everywhere else first.”

He goes slowly. More slowly than they've ever done this before. For all his excitement, he needs to relish every second of this. Especially if she is to deprive him of her touch again.

He starts at her ankles, because he does not trust himself to put his lips anywhere near her throat yet. He kisses up her legs, one at a time. Rey gives him a little squeak when he nibbles at the flesh behind her knees. The insides of her thighs.

Her squeaks grow into soft, warm moans when he presses his mouth, so gently, against the swollen flesh at their apex.

“You make the prettiest little noises,” he breathes against the softness of her stomach, hands pinning her to the bed. “My pretty little Omega.”

“Yours,” she promises, breathless. “Yours. Please, Ben. _Please.”_

He does not heed her begging. He wants to—oh, how he wants to, how deeply his teeth ache with the desire to find her sweet gland and _claim_ her already. But he will take his time. Her body is so many miles of trembling skin, and he will own every inch of it. He grasps and pets and murmurs everywhere he can touch. She is his conquest, this lovely girl. He has _earned_ her.

She has given herself to him.

He doesn't know when he begins to touch her there, sliding his fingers along her seam, but Rey begins to whimper uncontrollably in response. He wants her like this. Wants her desperate and mindless in her need for him. She is beautiful, too—oh so beautiful—Ben could watch her whine and plead for weeks and never grow tired of the way her eyes follow him, hopeful, almost on the edge of fear that he will continue to work and work and work her with no relief.

He likes that touch of fear in her eyes. He likes how she spreads herself further, completely at his mercy. Surrendering, even in her vulnerability. It is the same thing he has felt ever since he first put his lips to her skin. Terror at the significance of this thing—and helpless to give himself over to it anyway.

Her scent is a roar around him when he finally moves past her heaving chest. To the hollow of her throat. Her eyes are almost completely black when he meets them. Quivering.

“I’m here,” he tells her again. “I'm here.”

He’s not sure for whose benefit these words really are.

Ben’s hands are sure as they slide up both sides of her throat. His thumbs find each gland, beneath each of her ears, and Rey’s entire body stiffens with pleasure.

_“Shhh.”_

He drags back and forth across them. Presses, just a little too deeply. Just to see. Rey’s eyes squeeze shut, mouth trembling.

“How does it feel? Knowing what I'm about to do to these?”

 _“Pleeeease…”_ She is _desperate,_ his girl. As if she is deep in heat all over again. _“Alpha.”_

“Which one? This one? Or this?”

“ _Ahhh—_ oh, _god—”_

“You need to choose, sweetheart.”

Rey is beginning to pant. A curse slips out of her. "Wherever you want, Alpha. Anywhere.  _Please_.”

He has never felt anything like this, the thrill of what he is about to do. The power of it. He almost wishes he could remain on the precipice of this moment forever, if every neuron of his being were not screaming at him to lean forward and _take his Omega._

He chooses for her, in the end.

“I want to be inside you, when I have you.” He sounds hoarse. Urgent. “I need it.”

“Yes, oh yes—” She is looking up at him like he is brilliant. Like this is the best thing she’s ever heard. Her fingers reach down his body, seeking, and Ben hisses when they curl around him. Stroking.

“Fuck. That's right. Just put it right— _yes.”_

Wet warmth opens for him as he pushes inside her. He can tell by the way her breath catches that he goes a little too quickly—she must be sore, his poor girl, and he forgets sometimes that she is so damn _small—_ but then he is completely inside her. Filling her.

Joined, as they should be.

Her fingers reach for his own glands, rubbing over them, and then—Ben feels his cock _pulse_ inside the hot squeeze of her—she brings them, trembling, to her own. Rubbing his scent into the skin there.

It is at once the most tender and erotic thing he has ever witnessed.

“Omega,” he says raggedly. Because she doesn't need to do that. Because she will soon smell like him all the time. With new urgency, he pulls her fingers away from her throat and raises them to his mouth. Kissing them. Ben groans mindlessly. His hips start to give their own shallow, scattered thrusts.

Nothing has ever tasted so good as the explosion of them both on his tongue.

“Ben.” His name comes out on a whining gasp. “I’m not going to—to last long—”

He grunts, thrusting into her. “I know.” He knows, even though they're not mated yet. He knows because he knows everything about her. He would forget his own name before he forgets what she feels like, fluttering around him, right before she's just about to come.

When they're mated, he will know this even better.

It is this thought that finally, finally brings him to her throat. He could cry at the way she arches, pressing her cheek to the pillow. Letting him.

He can't help but touch it again, this little quivering patch of skin. It is shiny with her arousal. Swollen. “So beautiful.” He strokes it with a finger and nearly comes from the way she spasms around his body, the long, breathless keen that leaves her. It makes him still inside her, panting and dizzy and on the brink of something infinite.

“This is mine now.” Ben has been waiting his entire life to say those words. He kisses her gland, very slowly, and she shudders bodily beneath him. Her hands are twitching at his hair, so Ben takes them, gathers her wrists and presses them over her head with a tenderness he didn't know he possessed.

“This might hurt,” he tells her hoarsely.

“I don't care.”

She looks lucid, suddenly, as lucid as she is wild. Her mouth is trembling a little with each small intake of breath. There is no terror in her face. Only need. And isn't it right, that she would be his mate. That he would find his match in the only person to ever challenge him, to elude and frustrate and inspire him in turn. He understands now that she is not his opposite, but rather all the pieces of himself that have always been missing. His equal. His mate. _His_ . His, his, his, his, _his—_

The first, testing scrape of his teeth on her gland is—delirious. Catastrophic. Ben groans deep into her throat. He can feel her pulse racing wildly beneath his fingers, wrapped around her wrists. Her fear and desire and anticipation.

“Yes,” she's saying, voice cracking. “ _God_ yes, Ben, yes, that feels—it feels—”

He sinks a little deeper. _Fuck._ His entire body is vibrating. He fears he is going to fly apart.

_“Yes—yes yes yes yes—”_

He only knows he’s released her hands because they're sliding through his hair, a sharp flash of pain, nails scraping his scalp as she pushes him down, into her throat, into her—

Ben cannot hold back any longer.

He can do nothing but please the Omega in his arms, pleading wetly for him to have her.

He presses his teeth deep, deeper into her gland and he is—

( _soaring he’s ascending he is flooded with blinding color as the world splits and cracks and ruptures into)_

Bliss.

The moment he breaks through her skin is pure bliss.

Ben cries out, but he can hardly hear through the roaring in his ears, surging in a crescendo of color and light. She is everywhere. Everything. Rey fills him—consumes him—burning through his body and remaking him. In those first, mindless moments, there is nothing else.

Ben thought he knew her scent. He is able to pick out his girl in a crowd of thousands, conjure up the shape and color and detail of her taste like something he’s been loving all his life.

But he sees now he didn't know her at all.

Rey is each of the tiny white flowers that peek through, desperate for life, between the strips of concrete. She is the sharp giddiness of hurling one’s body over a cliff, the moment suspended mid-flight just before hitting the water. She is summer grass, damp and shivering with rain and stretching toward the sun. She is a blazing sea of sensation that rushes through him, from where his lips touch her skin to where she pulses, vibrant and fierce, through his blood.

Ben can hardly register the faint iron on his tongue. There is only the brilliant throb of her, sinking deep into him, a shimmering ball of light. Touching every single part of him.

He still sees her—pink and damp and beautiful—and he can hear her, too. Gasping against his ear. But it's nothing compared to the enormity of her emotion, surging through him. He feels everything. _Everything._ The stretch of her body, pinched and sharp and _full_ of him as he fills her. The weight of his hands, cupping her face. He feels these sensations as though they are his own—and in a way, they are. Because everything she is belongs to him now.

When his hips snap into her again, he feels the pleasure careening up his spine like it is his own orgasm taking him. Like it’s his own body flying apart at the seams. He never knew it could be like this—that he makes her feel this way. His nerves tremble with shockwave after shockwave of sensation in a way he has never known before.

He is so overwhelmed by the experience of her ecstasy that he hardly notices his own climax, tumbling right on the heels of hers.

It is everything and nothing like the dozens of times they've done this before. Ben is distantly aware that what they've created here can never be unmade. In those endless moments afterward, they spin together, unlimited—the way light never stops traveling in the sky, soaring eternally onward. Even when its source has long flickered out.

Panting, Ben rolls them over. The physical sensation of her face burrowing in his chest is at once so far away and yet so intimate. He cards his hands through her hair and marvels at the silky feel of it, both against his fingers and his own scalp. Shivering pleasure.

If he were to look down at his body, he knows he would find himself the same. The same flesh. The same too-long limbs. Skin that burns too easily. Hair that grows too quickly and too long.  
  
He is the same—and yet he is forever changed.   
  
His veins are humming with the evidence of it—their mingled scent and blood and tears. He is reborn, baptized in the light of her.   
  
He _feels_ her.   
  
He feels her beyond their skin, damp and sticky with sweat. Beyond her scent— _their_ scent—surging all around them. He feels her in the hint of a smile, curling at her lips—and not because he sees it, but because the ghost of it tugs at his own. He feels her in the slow expansion of her lungs, the heaviness of his hand, possessive around her hip. He feels her as if he _is_ her.   
  
"I feel it too," she whispers. At least, he thinks she whispers it. The words are in his head before she speaks them, and Ben has never felt so whole. So alive.   
  
He echoes them back to her, hushed into her hair. His grief is gone. His fear is gone.   
  
Right now, at least, he knows she will not leave him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took way longer than I hoped, but it was obviously an important one so I wanted to make sure I got it right. I haven't read a lot of mating scenes for context so I decided to just make this as weird and surreal as possible. Thank you for continuing to abide my very liberal interpretation of this trope 😆
> 
> Come talk to me about reylo on [twitter](https://twitter.com/ohwise1ne)!


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